


Nice Things

by aideomai



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hogwarts Eighth Year, M/M, POV Multiple, Post-War, Trauma, Weed, guys.... idk, i would say there is like 8k of v mild plot and then 14k of romantic trash with no plot at all, plus! a joke i stole from david sedaris, this is a story about harry being touch starved and draco being desperate for him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:36:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23243857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aideomai/pseuds/aideomai
Summary: The first thing that happened was Theodore Nott came back from France.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 364
Kudos: 3614
Collections: my favorite drarry fics, prushnaje





	Nice Things

**Author's Note:**

> This is a weird story: I started writing it last year after a very sad and upsetting few weeks, and then picked it up when the world quietly went to hell this month. It is a story I have written mostly to comfort and amuse myself. I really cannot over-emphasise the lack of plot, and it would be a lie to say I wrote even half of it sober. Also, after writing I googled Theodore Nott and realised I'd completely misremembered his entire character history so this is essentially a made up Theo.
> 
> I'm not on tumblr anymore but I do check in there from time to time (like a creep!), and this was v much inspired first by zurka--durka's incredible [art](https://zurka-durka.tumblr.com/post/189115226333/its-halfblooded-prince-but-malfoy-tells-the-truth) and then by tepre talking about this art and their fervent belief that [Harry Potter would be a touchy boyfriend](https://tepre.tumblr.com/post/189122292875). Thank you to them for the inspiration and also for their v amazing fanworks. 
> 
> I don't know how or where to share this anymore given my own inactivity so lol.... idk! thanks for reading! tell your friends! sorry in advance!

The first thing that happened was Theodore Nott came back from France. This officially put the number of eighth year students up to seven across three different houses, which was, according to McGonagall, quorum, and meant that the school would no longer simply add a few beds to their existing dormitories. Instead, the eighth years would be given their own lodgings. _You will be welcomed,_ McGonagall wrote in a letter that accompanied the standard supply list, _and lodged in the Gatehouse._

“Oh, the Gatehouse!” Hermione said, trying to remember if she’d ever stumbled across it before. “It used to be at the gates themselves, of course, when Hogwarts still had a gatekeeper and you had to have an invitation to enter, before they developed the wards. Then apparently it got hurt feelings after the wards were put up and it wandered off and found itself a nicer view. I read about it, in _Hogwarts, A_\--”

“I think I can guess,” Harry said. Hermione made a face at him.

“It’ll be weird, not being in the dorm,” Ron said, and read the letter again. “Wait -- do you guys think -- I think this might mean that there’s not separate dorms for girls and boys.”

Hermione said, without meaning to, “Oooh,” while Harry got the stalwart expression of someone trying very hard to be happy for his best friends and all the sex they were having. Hermione repented, leaning over to squeeze his hand. “And it’ll be easier for all of us to hang out, won’t it.”

“We seem to manage anyway,” Harry said, smiling at her. Hermione hung onto his hand for a moment longer, then let it drop. Harry looked so tired all the time, like the summer had worn deep shadows under his eyes. She thought she’d gotten used to Harry being tired in the last long, terrible year, but he was different than he’d been in the Forest of Dean, when all their exhaustion and fear had combined in Harry’s determined, dangerous expression, the foreboding in his eyes, his mouth a grim line. Now he just looked a little lost. 

Hermione had hoped, with Voldemort gone, that Harry might have had some time to enjoy himself, or to find peace and solace. But the summer wasn’t going particularly well, and now it was as good as done. She and Ron came back from Australia to find that Harry and Ginny had broken up and were barely making eye contact with each other over the big table in the Burrow. Harry refused gruffly to talk about it at all, but Hermione and Ginny went out and got drunk in London and Ginny told her that they kept having panic attacks; that Ginny would try to take Harry’s shirt off and Harry would go for his wand; that when she and Harry were holding hands and trying to talk to each other about their last year, Ginny would abruptly think, _your brother is dead_ and not be able to speak for the rest of the night. Ginny wanted to talk about everything that happened, everyone they’d lost, in the morning, when she was clear-headed and facing the enormity of another wrong day, but Harry thought that would only ruin the day ahead. He wanted to talk about it, if at all, in the middle of the night, safely cocooned in bed, and then Ginny’s nightmares got worse.

“It’s too hard to work out who we actually want,” Ginny said bitterly, three tequila shots in. “I had a crush on him before I even knew him and I think he held onto me as some sort of prize that he would win if he got through the war, and now it’s like neither of us even knows who the other one is.”

He’d stayed at the Burrow, but partially because, as Hermione, Ron and Harry discovered very quickly, Grimmauld Place had reverted back to pre-War habits and hated them. Doors slammed shut on their fingers, sunlight never made it through the thickly grimed windows, shadows came lurching closer and closer as the evenings came on, cold laughter rang out from other rooms. Anything they cleaned reverted back to state by the next day, and after a week of fruitless toil they gave up and went back to the Burrow, where Harry had taken Ron’s room and Ron was sleeping in the twin bed by George, a comforting if useless head of red hair.

Hermione didn’t know what was going to happen to any of them. They went to a funeral nearly every day. They trailed off in the middle of conversations. She had Ron to anchor herself with, taking his hand, pressing close enough that she thought maybe she could climb into his skin, but she could hardly employ the same tactics with Harry. He seemed fiercely alone, set apart and other, in every room he walked into. Even Hermione, sometimes, had trouble looking at the jagged, lonely wizard who’d killed the Dark Lord and remembering that it was just scruffy Harry, her best friend who fell asleep on the couch with half-eaten sandwiches.

“You realise,” Ron said in a low voice late one night, when they’d slipped up to the attic and the mattress on the floor there, “that we’re going to be sharing with Slytherins, too. Theodore Nott, okay, whatever, but… Bill says that he heard from some of the goblins that Draco Malfoy is going back to Hogwarts, too. Do you think Harry will…” 

He trailed off, running his fingers idly along Hermione’s bare back. She sighed, moving in closer to him.

“I don’t know,” she said. “To be honest, I wouldn’t mind a repeat of sixth year. If they’re at each other’s throats, at least Harry won’t be…” 

“Yeah,” Ron said. It was a relief not to have to finish her sentence; he knew what she meant. Harry in the depths of his cyclical Malfoy obsession was deeply annoying but undeniably vital, present, glaring and slouching all about the place, off on not-very-secret missions or inevitably thrown in detention again. Hermione would almost welcome it.

“How do _you _feel,” Ron asked, “about sharing with Slytherins?”

“Oh, well,” Hermione said, and smiled down at Ron, swinging a leg over his lap and moving to straddle him. Ron’s hands on her hips, the blush that spread all the way down his chest. “I guess you’ll have to make it up to me.”

But even the hope of old schoolboy energy faded on the platform at King’s Cross, waiting for the Hogwarts Express to pull up. There was a low murmur of voices, hissed insults and a shiver of shock that trembled over the already sparser-than-usual crowd, and Hermione looked up to see Draco Malfoy, alone, dragging his trunk across the platform. 

Ron and Harry followed her gaze, and they all went quiet for a moment, watching him. Hermione and Harry had both testified at the Malfoys’ trials, where they’d hauled a ragged, greasy-haired Draco out of the Ministry holding cells he’d spent June in. She wasn’t sure where Malfoy had spent his summer, since then. Malfoy didn’t look much better than them, bags under his eyes and a strained expression that made him even more rodenty than usual. His hair had been trimmed neatly and he’d had a last growth spurt, it seemed, taller again, but last year’s robes hadn’t kept up with it. Malfoy Manor had been confiscated, and Lucius Malfoy, in exchange for an Azkaban sentence reduced to just five years, had paid a hefty reparative fine that was rumoured to have emptied the Malfoy coffers. 

“How the mighty have fallen,” Ron said, voice low. 

“He’s not going to have a good time at school this year,” Hermione said, watching the glares and narrowed eyes that followed Malfoy’s path.

“Seems a bit of a waste,” Ron said. “You’d think the war would have taught people the difference between actual criminals and snobby bullies. Not that it’s that simple,” he added hastily, glancing at Hermione, but she shrugged. It wasn’t as though she would ever like Malfoy, but it was hard to feel that bothered about him, after everything that had happened.

“Yeah,” Harry said, and then, unexpectedly, “Wait a minute.”

He set off across the platform, shoulders hunched as people fell away on either side of him, leaving a clear path to where Draco Malfoy was staring at him. Hermione half-wondered if Malfoy would pull his wand, or throw a punch, but instead Harry put his hands in his pockets and spoke quickly, shoulders hunched, face grim.

Malfoy said something in response, tentative and wary, and Harry pulled a long, thin box out of his robes, offering it over. Hermione watched Malfoy’s throat work. He took the box and opened it, and it took Hermione a moment to realise what he was doing: taking a wand out. His wand.

He looked up and said something else. Harry, looking deeply uncomfortable, shrugged. He hesitated, then held out his hand, and after a moment of his own hesitation, Malfoy shook it. They dropped hands as quickly as they could, and Harry swung around and half-ran back to Hermione and Ron.

Ron’s eyebrows were very high. “All right?” 

“It never felt right, that wand, anyway,” Harry mumbled. “And now I’ve got my old one back, it seems unfair to keep his just for the hell of it.”

“Right,” Hermione said cautiously. 

Harry shrugged, and the three of them looked back along the platform where Malfoy, pale-faced and pinched, was climbing onto the train. His head was ducked, his shoulders low. He looked broken down, beaten.

“Like you said, Ron. It just doesn’t feel worth it, keeping those old fights going.” A moment of bitter amusement flashed over Harry’s face and he added wryly, “Especially if we’re all going to be roommates.”

“God, if my thirteen year old self only knew,” Hermione said. “I think she’d petition the school.”

“Chain herself up outside McGonagall’s office,” Ron said, grinning. “Start a campaign.”

They got on the train.

\---

The Sorting and the feast went by in a weird blur of lights and memories; everything so normal, everything so different. At the Gryffindor table, fifty heads craned round to stare at Harry, who hunched his shoulders and ducked his head, eating quickly and hiding behind the reassuring block of Hermione and Ron on either side. Ginny, glowering but loyal, sat opposite, butting into any conversation that people tried to eagerly start up with Harry.

He couldn’t even slip out early, because at the end of her welcoming speech - a tense, awkward affair - Professor McGonagall asked the eighth year students to remain behind at the end of the feast and report to her to be settled. By the halfway point Harry’s head was throbbing, the bright lights of the stars and candles and the heat of the room, but he stuck it out, grim-faced, and pushed his plate away unfinished.

After the din of everyone filtering out and away to their Common Rooms, the Great Hall seemed huge and empty. Harry, Ron, Hermione and Dean moved uncertainly away from the Gryffindor Table and up to McGonagall. Justin Finch-Fletchley, looking extremely awkward, joined them, and from the Slytherin Table, pale and strained, came Draco Malfoy and Theodore Nott.

Harry had never paid much attention to Nott before. He was tall, with hillocky hair that managed, unlike Harry’s, to turn dishevelled into cool, and wide-framed glasses that made him look older than eighteen. Harry didn’t remember seeing him and Draco together much before -- he certainly wasn’t part of Draco’s gang of cronies -- but they were hanging close, shoulders overlapping. Harry looked at them too closely, and Draco looked up and met his gaze, and then both of them looked quickly away. It was too weird, Harry thought, after everything that happened, that they were expected to be in the same place. He wasn’t angry with Draco anymore -- it was hard to even remember how it felt, being that furious over schoolboy jibes -- but it seemed distinctly unfair that he had to see Draco, like a reminder from a past life.

“Well,” Professor McGonagall said. “Welcome back, all of you.” She smiled, thin-lipped and familiar. “I’m sorry that we could not make room for you in your old Houses, but the castle has a mind of its own. This way, please.”

She led them back through the Great Hall and out into the grounds, colder now that they weren’t streaming in surrounded by shouting children. Harry, Ron and Hermione stuck together, and nobody spoke. Harry wondered for a moment why he’d bothered coming back to school at all.

They went east from the castle doors, round past Hagrid’s Hut and the Whomping Willow and the Greenhouses, their breath fogging up in the cool mountain air. Everything was open, quiet landscape for a moment, and then the Gatehouse was there, cool stone that melted in against the last trailing trees of the Forbidden Forest. It was a large manor house, about as big as the Burrow but neater and more contained, sandstone with a gentle sloping roof and flowerbeds out the front. When they came down the path, the door swung open with yellow, buttery light waiting for them inside.

McGonagall led them on a brief tour: a tiny kitchen, only good for tea and coffee (“You’ll be expected to take your meals at the castle with the rest of the students”), a living room, a study area, a few bathrooms. Everything was lit by candles and in shadow, and Harry didn’t take it in. All the bedrooms were on the second floor, just a row of doors with copper labels for everyone. _Harry Potter_ curled, the letters stretching and shrinking in on themselves, on the last door to the west, and Harry waved everyone goodbye and went inside, closing his door firmly.

His trunk was waiting. Harry kicked off his shoes, clawed his way out of the constrictive robes, and was asleep before he could crawl under the covers.

\---

Harry woke early, that first morning, to the faint sound of birdsong outside his window. He could hear Ron snoring several doors down, which made everything more familiar. Otherwise his room felt entirely new: not the crimson-shaded cosiness of the Gryffindor dorm; not the higgledy-piggledy mess of the Burrow; not the heavy Gothic architecture of Grimmauld Place or the dreary canvas of the tent. Not, obviously, the cupboard under the stairs, or any of Privet Drive’s creamy pastel suburbia.

This room had high ceilings and whitewashed walls and there was an early frost on two huge windows that looked out across the grounds at a lower level than he was used to. Scratched floorboards, a large fireplace that he wasn’t sure was functional, several bookcases only half-full, as though waiting for him to add to them. Hermione would be delighted. When Harry slid out of bed, his feet touched a threadbare but warm carpet patterned in dim blue and gold, and the bed itself was redwood almost glowing in the early morning light, made with rumpled white sheets and a duvet that had fallen like snow over him in the night. It was a strangely adult room, small without feeling confined, simple without being childlike. Bare but sure. Harry wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Downstairs he was the first one up. There was a kettle waiting, which he put on, and then he padded around the space he hadn’t had the energy to explore last night. The kitchen was cold and laid with heavy slate flagstones, but a living room - their common room? - was cosier, with a comfy, mismatched group of couches and armchairs and more bookshelves and a record player. Ivy climbed the walls outside and strewed itself casually over the window. The view was of green hills which rolled steadily down to the Forbidden Forest but kept the house cupped as though in a palm. There were three bathrooms with white tiles where the light pooled milky blue in the middle, and two had showers and sinks and one had a huge bath on golden clawed feet surrounded by plants. Neville would like it. Harry just wondered tiredly if they were supposed to water them, if the House Elves came out here.

The kettle shrilled. He went back into the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea, and then he looked up and caught sight of Draco Malfoy, only half into his robes, rumpled white shirt and toothpaste on the corner of his mouth, eyes wide.

“Dreadfully sorry,” Draco said, and backed hurriedly out of the room before Harry could say that it was his kitchen too.

It took another hour before anyone else stirred and Justin Finch-Fletchley was the first to descend. Harry wasn’t sure what he would or could say to Justin, who he still mostly remembered with a guilty twist from second year, but Justin launched into a very long and complicated story about the quite boring dream he’d had. Harry only had to say “mm” or “weird” as Justin paused, and then Hermione came down to tell him about the floral wallpaper on her walls, and the trimmed grass green comforter that had been her favourite colour when she was ten, and the huge squashy couch jammed into the corner perfect for reading.

“Oh, yes, it’s brilliant, isn’t it,” Justin said, and told them that his room had several terrariums of sand and pebbles and succulents, and the bookshelf was stocked with the Hardy Boys and other childhood favourites, and that his bed had racing strips. And Dean came in halfway through and told them that he had a loft bed so sleeping up there was close and warm, the way he liked it, and that underneath in the space where the bed would go the room had set up an easel and paints and a little workbench for him.

Hermione was beaming. “What’s yours like, Harry?”

“I’ll show you later,” Harry said, hoping he’d find some way to put her off. He felt queasy. What did it mean, if everybody’s room reflected their personalities and their desires and his was a huge blank, a white space, nothing at all? It could have at least thrown a Quidditch poster in there, he thought bitterly, except when he tried to think of his favourite team all he could come up with was Ron’s. It was as though there was nothing real to him, nothing that was actually his, except maybe flying. Even then he could only think of his father’s name engraved into the shining cup. He was a weapon and now there was nothing left to fight.

“We better get to breakfast,” Hermione said, checking her watch, and went to wake Ron. Harry wasn’t sure if they were meant to bring the Slytherins with them, but if nobody else was going to bring it up he wasn’t, either. He went to brush his teeth instead, making awkward small talk with Dean, and then the five of them set off across the grounds back to the castle and the Great Hall. When they got to breakfast, Theodore Nott and Draco were sitting at the sparse Slytherin table talking quietly, so they must have slipped out when Harry was distracted. Draco looked tired but a little more like his old self. He reached across Nott’s plate for the salt and stole Nott’s bacon and Nott just laughed and cuffed him across the back of his neck. They were putting on a show of okay-ness, Harry thought, but he wasn’t really in a place to judge.

Life settled into a rhythm after that, one that was easy enough for Harry to lose himself in. The old routine of meals and classes yanked him back in, and the new living quarters weren’t enough to unsettle them. In fact, Harry, Ron and Hermione didn’t spend very much time at the Gatehouse. Nobody kicked up a fuss about them hanging out in Gryffindor Common Room on weeknights until they made the sleepy trudge back across the grounds to go to bed, and on weekends Hermione herded them to the library to study, or Harry and Ron played one-on-one Quidditch -- it had seemed unfair, somehow, to join the Gryffindor team this year, though Ginny as Captain had made it frostily clear they were both welcome, and one beater had broken into tears begging Harry to reconsider. More often than not, they went to Hogsmeade with Luna and met Neville and Seamus and whichever Weasleys had time. Harry wasn’t sure if they’d somehow escaped notice entirely or the professors were just turning a blind eye to their illegal expeditions, but they spent long hours in the Three Broomsticks and returned late. Harry’s blank room felt like a reprimand, but at least he didn’t have to spend much time in it.

It wasn’t as weird to live with Slytherins as he’d worried, either. For the most part, he barely saw them. Harry was quick and hurried in communal spaces and he supposed Nott and Draco were too, because in some ways it was as though they didn’t live there at all. He never got another sight of Draco, just woken and only half put together. Sometimes they would walk back from the Great Hall at the same time, which was uncomfortable, but Harry normally stuck back with Hermione and Ron while Draco paced quickly ahead, and there was no need to acknowledge each other. Nott would greet him pleasantly and distantly when they ran into each other in hallways or the kitchen. Draco, once, very low, had said “hello”. Harry had said “er” and then they’d both hurriedly left the room in different directions. 

When he was fifteen, it would have been the worst thing in the world, a torture designed specifically for him. And he was sure, if they were fifteen, that it would have been different: that Draco would have been everywhere, smirking, taunting, showing up to put on spirited performances of Harry’s latest embarrassments or wondering idly over a cup of tea whether Harry’s mother would have in some ways _preferred_ to die than grow up and be faced with his morning hair. He would have been confronted with Draco’s glittering eyes and sneer everywhere he looked, and there was no way Harry wouldn’t have risen to it. He could imagine several fistfights, at least a month’s worth of detention, jinxes every time he went to the bathroom, elaborate set-ups outside Draco’s bedroom door, which was on the very opposite side of the corridor, as though the Gatehouse itself had expected them to be at each other’s throats. It was definitely a more peaceful way to live, like this, though Harry didn’t find that thought particularly cheering. He wondered if Draco Malfoy had been another thing the world had set in his way as practice, like a very tiny, ineffective version of the evil to come, and now it was over and Harry and Draco had nothing left to say to each other. The thought was somehow very depressing.

The second thing that happened was Harry and Ginny had another fight.

\---

It wasn’t the best weekend to begin with: Halloween 1999, and the _Daily Prophet_ had put a whole lovingly detailed spread together about the night Harry’s parents were murdered, recreating it with _eyewitness interviews_ and an eight-page editorial about the Boy Who Lived and all he’d gone on to achieve. On page eighteen was an interview with a psychic, who confirmed that she’d spoken to Lily Potter and received the news that Lily was very proud of his son, though she hoped he would settle down soon and not return to the wild ways he’d been caught in over the past summer (for a summary of those wild ways, turn to page thirty-four: Harry Potter falling drunk out of a nightclub! Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley caught fighting at the Leaky Cauldron! Harry Potter making an extremely rude gesture at our reporter!).

Harry didn’t take the _Prophet_ anymore but he knew all this because Dennis Creevey had shyly brought it over to him at lunch and wanted to go through every page with him. The _Prophet_ had used some of Colin’s photos of Harry and credited them to him, and Dennis was torn between glowing pride and desperate grief, and Harry didn’t have the heart to tell him he didn’t want to see it. He sat through a blow-by-blow of the whole spread, grim-faced, and then when Hermione and Ron tried to catch up with him afterwards he snapped that he was fine and it wasn’t worth discussing. But if he was honest with himself, the black cloud of his mood had descended then, long before Ginny, on their way to the Three Broomsticks, remarked casually that she supposed it was for the best that they’d broken up, they wouldn’t have worked in the long run, and it was nice that Harry and Dean were getting along.

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” Harry said, glaring.

“Harry,” Ginny said, mouth snapping tight.

“You don’t know what would have happened in the long run,” Harry said. “You didn’t want to try.”

“Oh, and you did, of course,” Ginny said, eyebrows drawing close together, “and I suppose that’s why you said _oh fuck, thank god_, when I suggested we give it a break--” and then they were off.

The row lasted all through the shortcut through the outskirts of the Forest to the Hogwarts Gates, where they usually Apparated the rest of the way to the village. Sometimes they flew the short distance, and they were all gripping brooms that day, but Harry and Ginny couldn’t yell as effectively while they flew, so they’d walked with Ron, Hermione, Dean and Luna trailing uneasily behind them. Finally at the Gates Harry said, “It’s - you know, whatever, I’m going back to the castle.”

“Oh, come on,” Ginny said, “don’t be like that--”

“I’m not being _like anything_, I’m not in the mood for--”

“Harry,” Ginny said, agonised, and a minute longer and they were going to end up in each other’s arms, biting instead of kissing, and Harry was already so tired and sore. He shook his head, tried to soften his voice.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right, I’m sorry, let’s not talk about it anymore, it’s just if I come we’re going to ruin the night for everyone--”

“Then I’ll stay home--”

“It’s fine. It’s really fine. I’m behind in Transfigurations, anyway,” Harry said, which was true, he did have an essay due, and he and Ginny reached to clasp each other’s shoulders at the same moment, meeting each other’s eyes. It would have been better if they didn’t touch each other like veterans, but Harry wasn’t sure what else was left to them anymore. He raised an apologetic hand to the rest of the group and got on his broom and skipped out of the whole evening.

He flew low across the grounds, through the emptying light of the autumn evening. The nights were getting longer, the shadow of the castle darker as they hurtled towards winter. He felt like another shadow in the dying twilight. He was so sick of living in his own head. He wanted to crawl right out of it.

Nights at the Three Broomsticks were good, surrounded by his friends, the people who actually knew him, but they were dangerous for the same reasons. Harry would just work a little on his Transfigurations essay and then go to bed early, enjoy the smugness of being the only one without a hangover tomorrow. He dropped his broom by the back door of the Gatehouse and let himself in and then paused, a stranger on the threshold, as the music and warmth of the living room hit him and Draco Malfoy and Theodore Nott whirled guiltily around to stare at him.

They were sitting on the broad windowsill, each with their back to the wall, the huge windows flung open, and the gramophone in the corner had been dragged out and was playing a fast, roiling song on guitar that Harry faintly recognised. In Draco Malfoy’s long fingers was a joint, and they both looked like naughty children, so much so that Harry, despite himself, laughed.

That made Nott’s shoulders relax. “Merlin, Potter,” he said. “We thought you were all off for the night as per.”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “I changed my mind. Sorry, I didn’t know you were…” His mouth quirked. He gestured.

Draco’s cheeks were very faintly pink. He was wearing a thick knitted jumper against the cold, and his hair was more touseled than Harry was used to. He said, “Um, no, of course, you have every right--”

Nott took the joint from Draco. He turned towards Harry. “You want to join?”

Harry hesitated, but it wasn’t like he had to be embarrassed in front of _Slytherins_. “Actually,” he said, “I’ve never.”

Draco’s eyebrows went up. Nott looked surprised. “Oh,” he said. “Well, this is good stuff. Isn’t it, Draco?”

“Um,” Draco said. “Yes. It’s not bad.”

“_Not bad_,” Nott said, looking offended. “It’s better than that rubbish you and Blaise and Pansy used to smoke. Once it was _oregano_,” he added to Harry, “and they were fourteen and so terribly impressed with themselves that they didn’t know the difference and smoked it and Draco told everyone that his quill had grown a face and spoken to him. Daphne nearly tore them to shreds when we worked it out.”

“Oh my god,” Draco said faintly, and lent his head back against the wall, and the sight of him, embarrassed but not retreating, soft and caught out and moving much slower than usual, abruptly made up Harry’s mind for him. He crossed the room, and smiled with only a little strain.

“Well,” he said, “as long as it’s not oregano,” and accepted the joint from Nott.

Nott was surprisingly friendly, and much calmer than any other Slytherin Harry had come across. Neither of them laughed when Harry choked on the first drag, and Nott talked him through it, showed him how to breathe deep and hold it. Harry said, frowning, “When will I know if it’s worked?” and then about three minutes later, “Oh,” and they did laugh at him then, but it was almost friendly. Nott’s eyes were too dark to properly tell, but against the grey Draco’s pupils were huge and dark, and judging by that and how relaxed they were and the smell lingering Harry was pretty sure they’d been smoking for a while. Perhaps that was why they were being so non-judgmental, and all the typical Slytherin mockery would come flooding back in the morning, but Harry didn’t care much right then. He leaned his elbows on the middle of the sill and listened to them talk shit as they passed the joint around. Nott had put his feet in Draco’s lap, Harry noticed, faintly charmed by the silliness of it, and Draco had his free hand curved around Nott’s ankle, gave his foot a pet now and again.

Draco had always been very touchy with his friends, now Harry thought about it. He remembered Draco lying back with his head in Pansy’s lap, Draco throwing an expansive arm around Crabbe’s shoulders even when Crabbe was a head taller than him. Harry wondered what it was like. He and Ron and Hermione touched each other when they needed to, or when they’d survived something unexpected. He knew the feeling of their bodies down to his bones, but only through the hard knock of them throwing themselves against him when he found them again after the long summer break, or when they’d solved an impossible problem, or when, against the odds, they hadn’t died. It felt like it would be diluting the power of that touch, to hold them casually. Harry frowned. He took another drag.

“All right, Potter?” Nott said, and Draco was watching him too.

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry said. “Do you guys do this every weekend?”

Draco and Nott made guilty faces at each other.

“Most weekends,” Nott said. “My mother is convinced we’re ruining our short term memories. But at least there’s barely any hangover.”

For a moment, Harry was almost jealous, as though the Slytherins had cottoned on to some secret plan that meant you never got overwhelmed and shouted things you didn’t mean, or made out with your ex, or vomited three times on your way home. He confided this and Draco said, “Well, Blaise always throws up,” and smiled at the windowsill as though he were too nervous to smile at Harry himself. Harry nodded. He leaned forward, to feel the cool air on his hot face, elbows planted on the windowsill, and it knocked his shoulder against Draco’s knee, which was warm through his trousers. Harry stayed there, leaning against it, and Draco didn’t say anything; he might not even have noticed. 

Nott told a long, rambling story that was somehow very funny about his older sister’s terrible fiance, and then embarked on a reenactment of the way he had to use his shitty French to ask for things in stores last year: _hello,_ he recited in English, straight-faced while Harry laughed so hard his chest hurt and Draco leaned back, this quiet, breathy laugh that caught in his chest, _sometimes my broom gets dirty and I wish to make it clean. Do you have the liquid thing that comes in small tubs that I can use for this? _

“That’s right,” Harry said, when he could breathe again, “you were in France last year.”

Nott looked uncertain for the first time. “Um, yes,” he said. “My parents, you see, they were -- well, they were both Slytherins and Pureblood and they moved in certain circles but, um, my aunt married a Muggle, and they were never all that big on the -- well, you know--”

“Virulent hatred,” Draco said quietly, and Harry looked at him.

“Yes,” Nott said. “Anyway, they didn’t think they’d be trusted amongst anyone else, and they didn’t want to fight for - for You-Know-Who.” He stuttered a little as he said it. “So we jumped ship. Went to France. This little place in Toulouse. Beautiful,” he added regretfully, sounding more like himself, “but very boring.”

Harry and Draco laughed at the same time, and then shot each other surprised looks. 

“I was just thinking,” Draco said, “that boring and beautiful sounds lovely,” and Harry said, “Yeah, me too,” and bent his head, which was heavy, against Draco’s knee. Draco didn’t move it away. Harry was understanding, more and more, the appeal of smoking: he felt tired and heavy but good. Everything he touched was interesting. Everything they talked about was interesting, too, and had lost all the barbs that might anger or hurt him.

“Well,” Nott said, and changed the subject.

Draco rolled another joint, fingers quick on paper. They talked about their classes that year -- “I was going to write my Transfigurations essay tonight,” Harry realised, and Nott said, “Oh, it’s _Friday_,” -- and how titchy the first years suddenly seemed and the rumour going around about the secret fifth year duel club, who had apparently learned about the DA and decided to make it bloodier. They did not talk about the war, or about their plans for the future, or about any of the very complicated relationships in that room alone. It was like a breath of fresh air, and Harry was having such a good time that the disappointment hit him like a blow when Nott yawned and said, “Merlin, I’m done. It’s bed for me.”

“Oh,” Harry said, without meaning to, and that was the bad thing about the weed, too, it stripped all his defenses away, it meant he sounded lonely and abandoned, like a child. He dropped his head, face hot. 

Then Draco moved for the first time, nudging his knee against Harry’s forehead. When Harry looked up, Draco raised his eyebrows and said, “One more?”

Harry nodded, slow. When Nott waved a sleepy goodbye and headed upstairs, Harry moved up into Nott’s spot and slid his feet out before he could stop himself, tapping at Draco’s.

“Hey,” Draco said, and Harry flinched back, but Draco was already reaching for him. “Take your shoes off, you big lump.” 

But Harry didn’t: instead he watched, eyes wide, as Draco unlaced Harry’s sneakers and dropped them down onto the ground one by one, like it was easy. Harry’s foot was cold, like that, even with his socks. He slid one between Draco’s and Draco squeezed his feet together. All the breath left Harry’s lungs in a rush. “That feels good,” he said dumbly.

Draco looked at him, sleepy-lidded, too high to be self-conscious. “It’s the weed,” he said.

“Yeah,” Harry said, and stayed where he was while Draco tapped his feet over Harry’s, making him laugh.

He woke late the next day, groggy in a not unpleasant way. Worse was the all too clear memory of the night before. He lay staring up at the ceiling, cheeks burning. It was fine to be polite to Draco Malfoy -- the war was over, Draco had proved himself almost usefully incompetent at being a bad guy, in a weird way they even lived together -- but playing footsie with him was probably a step too far. He didn’t think Draco had the capacity to infuriate him anymore, but he didn’t like the idea that Draco had a new embarrassing thing to hold above Harry’s head. And if Harry had scared him into silent awkwardness up until now, surely last night had done enough to dispel that.

He went downstairs because he was determined not to hide in his own room, which he hated in any case. 

The kitchen was empty. It wasn’t that late after all, just past nine; Ron, Hermione and Dean were probably still sleeping off the hangovers. Harry made himself a cup of tea and sat at the weatherbeaten table. He should go up to Hogwarts if he didn’t want to have to beg breakfast from the House Elves at the kitchens later but he stayed where he was, sipping his tea, mouth screwed up in the corner.

Draco appeared in the doorway and Harry realised he’d been waiting for him.

“Hello,” Draco said cautiously, and Harry said, “There’s water in the kettle.”

Draco nodded. He made a cup of tea. 

On his way to the kettle, he reached out and, with a gesture that was so careless it had to be very studied, touched Harry’s hair, and so while he dunked his teabag and waited fussily for it to steep and added milk Harry spent the whole time grinning at his back, and he was still grinning when Draco turned around. He’d _known_ Draco was touchy. He’d guessed it, and now he’d had it proved right.

Draco rolled his eyes when he turned back. He said in the crisp, posh voice that used to drive Harry mad, “Well,” and then he came and sat down next to Harry and they drank their tea in silence. They sat neatly for a while and Harry thought what a useful excuse the weed had been and how uninterested in excuses he was at the moment and how long it had been since he felt uncomplicatedly good and surely the things that worked were worth holding onto, no matter how extremely weird they were, and then he moved and their shoulders pressed up close and it was as though the anxiety in his chest quietly opened a door and waved a hand in farewell and left.

“We’re missing breakfast,” Draco said after a while, and Harry said, “Ah, we’ll make lunch.”

\---

Justin knew that the Slytherin boys had been sneaking off and smoking up, of course; he’d known for weeks. They weren’t that good at hiding it and he didn’t join the Gryffindors on their pub trips, so sometimes he’d be spending a Friday night in his room working on an essay and smell it coming up through the floorboards. It didn’t bother him, not after four years of Zacharias Smith experimenting with whatever he could steal from the Greenhouses, though he thought it was a little rude of them not to share. He had to correct himself on that after Harry Potter started skipping the pub trips. Perhaps they would share, but he’d never bothered to ask.

“Afraid I was right, old chap,” Ernie said, who was never afraid to be right at all. “You _are_ lonely.”

“No, not necessarily,” Justin said, strolling securely between Ernie and Hannah, his hands in his pockets. The first Hogsmeade weekend had dawned sunny and clear, but there was a crisp bite of autumn in the air and Justin was wondering, a little nervously, whether he should offer Hannah his scarf. “Actually it reminds me of what my sister said uni halls were like. Muggle school, you know,” he added, when Ernie and Hannah looked blank, because he’d long given up trying to explain tertiary education to any purebloods. It was honestly a little worrying. “We share the house and everyone’s polite to each other but no one needs to be best friends. It’s a lot calmer than the dormitories.”

“I thought for sure it would be madness,” Hannah said. “With Malfoy and Potter together.”

“Well,” Justin said, “no, not as such.”

“Not as such?” Ernie said, with the eager gleam in his eyes that meant he sensed gossip. 

Justin’s mother had always said that a gentleman knew when to keep his mouth shut, so he waved his hand and said, “They ignore each other, mostly. How’s the Ministry?” and gave Hannah a look that meant, _tell you later_.

In fact, Justin thought as Ernie launched into an exhaustive account of his daily dealings in the International Magical Trading Standards Body under the hallowed hand of his boss and mentor, Assistant Regional Manager for Eastern Europe Henry Galliloggled, the Malfoy/Potter situation had certainly defrosted of late. He’d put it down to sharing a joint or two at first, and then he’d heard Granger saying grudgingly that she supposed someone had better be polite to Malfoy once in a while, and that it had been good of Harry to talk to him on the way back from dinner the other night.

“Er,” Potter had said, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and looking a bit like he wanted to crawl out of his skin. “Sure. Yes.”

After that, Justin had paid them some attention. It was easier for him to watch, because he wasn’t part of the Gryffindor or Slytherin group, but neither of them seemed to mind him, and so he mostly went unnoticed in the Gatehouse. He spent most of his time at school with Hufflepuffs who were all technically a year younger than him, but they were friendly and knew him well, and so at the Gatehouse he slipped into an observatory mode that made him feel a little like an outsider, but also quite knowing. It levelled out.

And actually, he wasn’t sure that Potter _was_ just extending some sort of awkward courtesy to Malfoy, or that they were just turning into potheads - ha, ha - together. He’d seen them walking across the grounds together several mornings in a row, earlier than most people were up. Malfoy lingered about more in the common areas, like he was waiting. In the kitchen Potter had started making two cups of tea. Once he’d come in late from a study session in the library and found them sitting in the lounge room, and Potter had fallen asleep on Malfoy’s shoulder, his face turned in towards Malfoy’s neck, a breath away from touching, one hand flung across Malfoy’s stomach, his fingertips curling against Malfoy’s sweater. The whole thing was so tentative that Potter still could have been in the act of reaching except that he was asleep. 

Malfoy had looked up and seen Justin and looked like he’d swallowed a lemon, but he hadn’t said anything and Justin had moved on without acknowledging them.

“Merlin,” Hannah said, when Justin confided all of this to her in a hasty whisper, keeping an eye out for Ernie buying their Butterbeers at the Three Broomsticks. “Do you think they’re…?”

“I honestly think they’re not,” Justin said. He ruffled his hand through his hair. “I think for that they’d just sneak around. This seems… weirder than that.”

“How out of character for them,” Hannah said, and looked up, smiling, to take one of the pints Ernie offered them.

Ernie was puffed up and outraged at the fact that Eleanor Branstone had just snubbed him, acted as though he hadn’t been her very Prefect, and Justin was distracted from the interpersonal politics of the Gatehouse as Hannah laughingly chimed in with him. As they were leaving, though, he noticed Malfoy and Potter at a table towards the back. They’d normally not be very successful at hiding, but Malfoy had pulled his hood up over his bright hair and he’d wedged Potter in against the wall, an arm draped over Potter’s shoulders and Potter’s head turned towards him so only a slice of Potter’s face was visible. They were talking, calm and serious. 

Justin considered pointing them out to Hannah, but they were already halfway out the door by then. It was turning out to be a more peaceful year than he’d expected, considering he was sharing a house with Harry Potter. He didn’t at all mind them keeping their quiet secrets.

\---

He kept waiting for Draco to push him away. He kept waiting for Draco to say something vile or do something evil. He kept waiting for the weird shock of touch to not knock him clean out of his head, leave him quiet and warm and happy.

When none of it happened, Harry got bolder. He walked with Draco into the Great Hall some mornings and let his steps list, bumped his shoulder against Draco’s, once and again, and Draco didn’t react. When he did it again the next day, Draco just bumped him back, eyebrows going up. He steadied himself on Draco’s hip when he leaned up to get a mug out. He tapped his foot against Draco’s when they were on the couch, waited for Draco to tap back. 

It helped that the rest of the school had suddenly lumped them into the same category, a maneuver that would have infuriated Harry three years ago and now was mostly just useful: maybe a little funny. Draco Malfoy was an ex-Death Eater, he’d destroyed the Room of Requirement, he’d stalked through the school sneering and making his allegiances almost embarrassingly obvious for seven years, fine, but Harry Potter had killed the Dark Lord. In the eyes of the rest of the school, that levelled them out into something that was equally worrying. You weren’t meant to go to school with villains, maybe, but not heroes either. The seventh years - who Harry kept mentally thinking of as sixth years - veered away from them, and the rest of school followed suit. 

It wasn’t just Harry and Draco, either. Ginny was the only Gryffindor not slightly afraid of Harry. It rubbed off on Ron and Hermione too, even Dean and Justin, whose reflexes, after a year on the run, were sharper, whose eyes were harder. Theodore Nott was a Slytherin, enough said. And all seven of them lived outside the school, as though they lived outside its rules, too. When they walked into the Great Hall, conversation faltered, then picked up lower than it had been before. In classes they sat apart, sleepy, a little bored. It was as though, unexpected to everyone, a fifth house had shown up.

And the Gatehouse itself seemed sleepy, worn out from the war, as though they had all made a silent agreement to suspend judgment and let their dynamics sort themselves out. Which meant that Ron and Hermione nodded abruptly at Draco without speaking to him, and in the space that left, Harry wandered closer. 

At first it was like a dumb, childlike reaction in his head. It felt good to be touched, and Draco would touch him, so Harry walked straight into him whenever he could. He looked for a pattern or reasons or boundaries, secret motivations or even fear, like perhaps Draco had some terrible plan or was just too subdued after the war to bat Harry away. But it turned out that Draco was mostly unselfconscious about such things, and if he trusted you, he touched you. He touched Harry’s arm when he wanted Harry’s attention, and he leaned on Harry when he was tired. To Harry, this was the wondrous thing, the strange, magic shift in their alchemy. To Draco, it was the trust.

“It’s very embarrassing,” he said, sour-mouthed, as they kicked through drifts of leaves in the courtyard on the way to Charms. “Obviously I still mostly hate you. It’s just a byproduct.”

“Obviously,” Harry said, fascinated. “A byproduct of what?”

Draco frowned. “Uh, the war?”

“Right, I remember it,” Harry said. 

The other thing was that Draco was like a puzzle: he never said what he meant, he operated on a different wavelength from Harry. He was something to focus on, something to think about as Harry drifted off to sleep. Harry couldn’t fall into bed and sleep when his mind was blank, or dully repeating _everything is okay now_. He was used to figuring out who was trying to kill him, or how to avoid Umbridge, or who the Heir of Slytherin was, or what Draco Malfoy was up to. This was a familiar and complex enough thing for Harry to fixate on that he could fall asleep trying to work it out, but all of the anxiety and fear had drained from it. He fell asleep heavy, pleased. _I’ll work it out_ like a caress, a promise. 

“Well,” Draco said. “You could have killed me about three times. And you saved me instead.”

Harry’s mouth went dry. He looked at Draco. They had stopped walking, hands in their pockets, facing each other. “You saved me, first.”

“Yes,” Draco said. He paused, then repeated, “Yes. So, I don’t know. It’s hard to take you hating me seriously. And… vice versa.”

“Yeah,” Harry said. 

“You’re just saying that for the sake of it.”

“No,” Harry said. “I get it. Like we’re a little beyond that now.”

Draco’s cheeks went thinner and angrier and pinker. “Yes,” he said.

They made awkward eye contact and turned and walked on to class. In Charms they were studying variations on locking charms and Hermione knew them all, every single one, and offered further information on how these locking charms could be turned into walls, borders, fortresses. Harry knew the charms too and he didn’t want to know the theory behind them. After a while he turned and tucked his knees up against the wall and his back on Draco’s shoulder and he folded his arms across his chest and tucked his head down and dozed. No one commented, probably too embarrassed, and Draco’s back was straight and steady all through class.

In the Gatehouse they started sitting up in the living room. It became less of a transit area, books and parchment and quills migrating down to join them, half-stale cups of tea, the fire properly stoked. At first it was Harry and Draco and Theo, sharing a joint or a few beers, because no authority figure had seemed to notice when Harry and Ron dragged crates back from Hogsmeade and stuck them under the sink. But Hermione and Ron started to join them, resigned to Slytherin company and keeping a close eye on Harry. Harry liked it when they joined. He wanted their company, of course, and it also meant that he had an excuse to move to the couch next to Draco, lounge against him for the evening. 

He tried to play it relatively safe around the Gryffindors, touches that wouldn’t attract much attention, boring, incidental moments of contact, and then when they’d gone to bed, he tipped his head against Draco’s shoulder, picked Draco’s hand up in his. He was fascinated by Draco’s long fingers, his raw knuckles. If Harry stared too long at them Draco would make a scoffing, uncomfortable noise and tug his hand away, but he would then just touch Harry’s neck, his hair. Like he didn’t know what Harry wanted and was trying to soothe him about it, but all Harry wanted was to be soothed.

“Do you think we should talk about it?” Draco asked. It was past midnight, Tuesday night, everyone gone to bed. They were smoking again, but just a small one. 

“What?”

“Everything. I don’t know. The war. Our entire school history, before you decided that I was just some kind of enormous cushion--”

Harry grinned at him. “Are you complaining?”

“Yes,” Draco said, acidic, his arm slung around Harry’s shoulders and not stirring.

Harry took the joint for a moment, chest tight as he passed it back and asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know. It seems like the kind of thing that’s going to backfire on me.”

“Why?”

“Come on,” Draco said. He took a deep drag, thin chest swelling. Harry watched him let it out. The way his lips parted, the flutter of a pulse in his throat. “I spent the past eight years being -- the worst kind of person -- and you were the fucking saint waiting every time I turned around--”

“It’s kind of nice that you still hate me,” Harry said, grinning, leaning forward and resting his chin on his knees. Draco readjusted. The hand that had been tucked at Harry’s neck went up into his hair, stroked through, firm. “I think your repentance would be less convincing if you were trying to pretend you’d secretly admired me all through school and just not been able to show it--”

“_Repentance_, fuck you,” Draco said, and shoved Harry so solidly that they both tumbled off the windowsill and onto the carpet in front of the fire, scuffling, laughing. Draco drew in a breath: “Wait, _secret admiration_, fuck you _harder_\--” and Harry cackled, tumbled Draco underneath him and caught his wrists, straddled Draco’s waist. Drew those arms up higher.

Draco looked up at him, heavy-lidded and lazy. “You’re a fuckwit,” he said. “You don’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Harry said, and toppled forward, tucking his face against Draco’s neck. They both drew in shaky breaths. “You smell really good.”

“Merlin,” Draco said, and started laughing again.

But they did talk about it, those late nights. Sitting up with their shoulders jostling and their feet pushed out towards the fire and talking about last year. It turned out most of the Snatchers had lived in or on Malfoy Manor, all through the guest rooms, rows of tents in Narcissa’s flowerbeds. They started there, talking about the Snatchers they had been most afraid of, the ones who made leering eye contact with Draco over dinner or threw a _crucio_ that caught Harry’s hip and made it catch and jag for the next week. And then they talked about everything else. Nagini sliding through Draco’s house. Harry on Shell Beach with the warmth leaching out of Dobby’s body. 

“Sometimes I thought about leaving,” Draco said, then made a face, twisted. “No, worse than that, I thought about being rescued. Because I was the one at risk, obviously.” He laughed, jagged. “Not Muggleborns or anyone on the run or Weasleys or -- obviously I was the great tragedy of the war. I thought someone would know that I wanted out and swoop in and save me.” He paused, then continued savagely, “You probably won’t believe me, but Dumbledore -- right at the end, Dumbledore told me, that he could get me out, he could protect me and my parents.”

“I believe you,” Harry said. “I was there.”

“What?” Draco’s eyes were bright, horrified. “But--”

“Under the invisibility cloak,” Harry said. “I know. He probably could have gotten you away, if the rest of the Death Eaters hadn’t been there.”

“And then I would have, what…”

“I don’t know,” Harry said. He tried to think it through. Snape the traitor who wasn’t a traitor, Dumbledore who turned out to have been dying all along. Dumbledore would have had a plan, Harry supposed. He couldn’t think about Dumbledore without weird shocks of pain and betrayal, but he supposed if Dumbledore had survived long enough he would have come up with something better than Harry and Ron and Hermione on the run. Something more targeted, at least. He would have hidden them; he would have found somewhere safe for them. He looked at Draco and realised, abruptly, what it would have been, what it would have involved. “Well, you would have been in hiding and so was I and we… would have ended up thrown together, I suppose.”

Draco stared at him, and then they were both laughing again, Draco’s hand on Harry’s face, his cheek, knuckles stroking along his stubble. Harry turned his face in blindly against Draco’s. They were both trembling.

The next morning Harry was embarrassed again. He woke groggily and a little nauseous, a _weed hangover_, Theo called them. He was sure he’d said more than he meant last night and more earnestly, and Ginny had always been so angry at him when they ended up talking about the war at night, ended up destroyed the next morning from nightmares and broken sleep. Harry came downstairs tentatively, but Draco was nowhere to be seen, and he stayed gone for the next hour.

Theo checked his wristwatch and swore. “Quarter to eight,” he said, “Malfoy’s going to be late for class. I tried to wake him twenty minutes ago.”

“You guys go ahead,” Harry said, standing and trying to keep his voice casual. “I’ll wake him.”

Hermione and Ron looked up. Harry slipped out of the kitchen, away from their eyes. He went up to Draco’s room, _Draco Malfoy_ in curling bronze on the door, and rapped. “Draco,” he said. “Draco.” He rapped again. The room stayed quiet.

Harry hesitated, then pushed the door slightly ajar. “Draco,” he repeated, a little louder. He pushed it further than he meant and caught a glimpse of Draco’s face, lax in sleep, hair slipping onto his pillow, one bare arm flung out from under the covers, and felt his gut twist with shock and guilt, and he went to pull the door back quickly, but Draco said, “Mmm?”

“It’s, er, time for class,” Harry said, through the gap. “You’ll be late.”

“Mrgh,” Draco said. “Potter?” and after a moment Harry let the door fall open again. Draco yawned in bed. “Time s’it?”

Harry padded nervously into the room. He was in his jeans and t-shirt, robes slung over the chair waiting for him downstairs. Draco reached out for him, took his wrist, pulled him lightly down onto the bed. “Nearly eight. You’ll be--”

“Five more minutes,” Draco murmured, and pulled at Harry again. “C’mere.”

“Malfoy--”

“Potter,” Draco said, and pulled Harry down, and then made fussy little noises until Harry climbed under the blankets and Draco made a very satisfied noise and slung his arm over Harry’s chest and his forehead against Harry’s shoulder and, for all intents and purposes, went to sleep. 

“We’re late,” Harry said. But he was still bleary-eyed and it was so cosy in Draco’s bed. He turned on his side and Draco made a pleased noise and curled up around Harry, his hand on Harry’s stomach, his cheek against Harry’s back. His hand felt strangely present. Harry’s stomach, never an area he’d thought of as sensitive, was tingling. Draco’s fingers twitched in his sleep and the muscles in Harry’s stomach leapt up to meet them. He felt tense and wired but he drifted off anyway and the next time he woke up, dry-mouthed, overheated, Draco Malfoy plastered on top of him, it was so close to lunch that there was no point trying to make the morning lessons. He let the tide of sleep pull him under. 

He woke again not long after because he was so hot he couldn’t bear it anymore, and struggled gasping out of his jeans, and then Draco made a sleepy, gentling noise and swiped a surprisingly cool palm over Harry’s forehead, pushing his hair back from his face. Harry turned into that touch and went back to sleep.

“You only _just_ woke up?” Hermione said, disbelieving and amused, when she returned at four to grab her Herbology books and found Harry sheepish and drinking tea at the kitchen table.

Harry shrugged. He felt heavy and tired in a pleasant way, like he was recovering from a long illness, each step an impressive and exhausting milestone. He supposed he should try and make it back for the last hour of lessons before dinner, but instead he hung around in the kitchen until Draco came down, robes on crooked and missing his tie, and they struggled yawning up to the Great Hall together. That night was the first time they skipped their respective tables and took a couple of empty chairs at the far end of the Ravenclaw Table instead. Harry vaguely noticed people staring at them, whispering, but he was still in that warm haze, and mostly he didn’t pay attention to anything except Draco’s elbow knocking at his from time to time. “Pass the,” he said, and broke off to yawn heavily, and when he turned back Draco was offering the salt out to him.

After that he supposed he should have learned to let someone else wake Draco up. Draco had started sleeping well again for the first time, he said, in a while, and apparently Draco’s version of sleeping well involved sleeping late. But Harry liked it when Draco was waking up, all easy and open, blinking up at Harry with the same surprised pleasure, so Harry took the opportunity himself whenever he could. It wasn’t too bad; he would say that seventy percent of the time he was successful in dragging Draco out of bed and to class only ten minutes late. And the other odd time or two, that he ended up in Draco’s bed with Draco nuzzling against him and making those soft, pleased noises, when they both ended up sleeping away the day and waking up occasionally to drink water and mumble to each other about things they had seen in the war or things they thought about each other, it didn’t matter so much. Harry always woke up after their long days asleep feeling refreshed and enerverated, like every day in Draco’s bed quietly eased away the muscle memory of a night in the forest. 

Hermione and Ron started to look more and more suspicious. They nudged close to the topic now and then, but Harry kept his eyes wide and said, “I thought we agreed at the beginning of the year it wasn’t worth hating him,” and then changed the subject. 

Still, he was expecting something to happen. Two weeks before Christmas, the Gryffindors planned a Hogsmeade night, and Hermione invited Justin and Theo when they were all in the living room after dinner one night. 

“And you too, Malfoy, of course,” Hermione said, and turned to look at Draco with a fixed, bright expression. 

Draco went still. 

“It’s the last time before we all go back for the Christmas hols,” Ron said, sounding determined. “We thought it could be a house outing, as well.”

“Well,” Draco said cautiously. Harry didn’t dare look at his face under Hermione’s scrutiny, and he could feel Draco avoiding looking at him, too. Draco’s wrist bumped against his and Harry pressed back, the very slightest movement. “Okay, then. If Theo comes.”

“Sure,” Theo said, sounding resigned. “I'm an equal opportunity drinker.”

“Good,” Hermione said, and turned that same bright, warning look on Harry.

At Hogsmeade they went down in two big groups, people drifting back and forth, everyone from the Gatehouse along with a few of the younger Slytherins Theo had rounded up -- Astoria Greengrass, Malcolm Baddock -- and Ginny and Luna. In the Three Broomsticks there were more people still: most of the younger Weasleys and Fleur, Neville, the Patil twins and Seamus waiting to clap Dean’s shoulders in delight. Harry and Draco spent most of the time on other sides of each group, until about ten when Harry was on his third pint and lonely and he cleared his way to the back and found Draco sitting at a table with Justin, tilting his head invitingly when Harry appeared. Harry slung himself around the booth and in against Draco, their thighs pressed close.

Draco’s hand dropped to Harry’s thigh, smoothed down his leg, scratched his kneecap, and then went back up to pick up his beer. Draco was left-handed, Harry noticed, charmed. 

“Alright, Harry? Anyway,” Justin said, “so then I told Professor Sprout that Ernie _knew_ he wasn’t any good at Herbology and he honestly didn’t need a grade bump-up or anything like that, but he was going to be insufferable until he got some form of approval from her, so couldn’t she just say thank you for one of the many, _many_ Christmas cards -- oh, uh, is that Seamus? Must go say hello,” he added hastily, and evacuated his chair under the twin glare of Ron and Hermione.

“Hello,” Hermione said. “We thought we’d find you here.”

“Very creepy entry, Granger,” Draco said.

“Right,” Ron said, straddling the back of a chair and giving them both a patient, disappointed look. “Who’s _Imperius_ed who, then?”

“I don’t think it works on me,” Harry said.

“You’ve got to be _fucking_ kidding me,” Draco said. “Really?”

“I mean, a few people tried,” Harry said, “and it got easier to fight off and then it sort of stopped doing much at all--”

“Truly, I loathe you,” Draco said. “What do you mean, Weasley?”

“I’ll handle this,” Harry said. “What do you _mean_, Weasley?”

Ron was laughing back at him, resting his chin on his folded arms, face long and warm in the candlelight. They grinned at each other for a moment, while Hermione rolled her eyes and stole a gulp of Harry’s pint. “Really, you’re freaking us out.”

“You’re up to something,” Hermione agreed, giving Draco a dark look. “We’d like to be in on it now, please.”

“Me too,” Draco said, and tipped back the last of his beer, face sour again.

“What?” Harry said to Draco, and then, “What?” to Ron and Hermione. He was flustered, heart beating too hard, pushing his hand up into his hair and twisting it back. “What’s to understand? We all agreed, there was no point fighting anymore, but it’s -- he can’t be nothing. He’s not nothing to me. It’s -- he’s one of the only ones that gets it. He was there. Obviously he was on the wrong side of it all but he still - he understands - and he doesn’t, doesn’t touch me like I’ll blow him up--”

He was faltering, almost stammering, unaware that that much had been waiting inside him to come out until he’d started. All three of them were staring at him. Draco said faintly, “It’s because I’m afraid of everything. It becomes harder to be frightened of specific things. You probably will blow me up but in the meantime I - I get--”

“Yes,” Harry said. “Exactly,” and levelled a defiant look at Ron and Hermione.

“Harry,” Hermione said. 

“It doesn’t feel worth it, anymore,” Harry said. “To not go for something. If it feels good. And I keep thinking how… pointless and awful the war was. It felt like my whole life was leading up to it and now it’s over and so my life is over, but what if it wasn’t the whole point, what if it was just... a horrible distraction? A kind of awful thing that got in the way and fucked everything up and was terrible but wasn’t my - my destiny. Wasn’t the only thing I’ll ever get to do.”

Ron’s face was cracked open, as though Harry had said something terrible. Hermione looked raw, shocked. 

“Yes,” Hermione said. “I think that’s good. I think that’s right.” She was crying a little, and dashed her tears impatiently away with the heel of her hand. “But that war turned us the way we are, and it turned him -- it means that was _he_ did--”

“I’m very sorry,” Draco blurted out. He drew in a shuddering breath. “I know it doesn’t change anything or matter, really. But I am.”

The little cocoon in the back of the Three Broomsticks felt private but it wasn’t, Harry knew, not really, and he felt conscious of that. Ginny’s eyes on them, Neville close enough that if Ron waved for help he would be there. Hermione looked at Draco grudgingly, then turned and signalled at Madam Rosmerta for four more pints. “Well, it matters a little,” she said.

They went back to school or London or home in dribs and drabs, breaking off in twos and threes. Harry ended up walking most of the way back to the castle with Justin and Theo as well as Draco. Theo was wasted, slung over Draco’s shoulders and waxing lyrically about Parvati Patil. _Those eyes_, he shouted up to the stars, _that long, silken hair, those - very nice breasts--_

“There, there,” Draco said, pausing to pat Theo’s back as he had to throw up a bit. He wasn’t meeting Harry’s gaze, eyes darting about, face turned into the shadows. Back at the Gatehouse Harry was half worried Draco was going to slip away, but he hung about with the rest of them and smiled and kept his head down and didn’t say a lot. Harry had to wait for Justin and Theo and Ron to finally stumble up to bed, Ron still throwing unsure looks over his shoulder. Draco leaned up against the windowsill, half resting in it, his downcast face thin in the dying light of the fire.

“What,” Harry said. He wanted to go to Draco but he was afraid.

Draco frowned and thumbed at the hem of his jumper. His throat worked. Then he said, in a very careful voice, “Are you fucking with me?”

“What?” Harry said.

“It would be a new level of creativity for you,” Draco said, “and - and crueler than you usually are, though obviously I’m aware that I’ve deserved it, over the years. But if you are, I just wanted to let you know that it’s been very successful and you can leave off now.”

Harry moved across the room very slowly. It was so dark, and he wanted to see Draco’s face better, map out the new details he was suddenly paying attention to. Draco looked up when Harry was a foot away. Harry said, “I’m not fucking with you.”

Draco nodded, a tiny, slight movement. “Okay.”

“Are you,” Harry said, and swallowed, “are you fucking with me?”

Draco let out a shivering breath. “No,” he said, and added quickly and worried, “but since we’re being so communicative tonight and given your -- insane and thrilling honesty policy, I thought I should tell you that I’m still not very good at, um, monitoring my emotions or managing anything half-hearted with respect to you, so if you keep this up I’m probably going to fall in love with you, which will be very awkward for everyone involved.”

“Er,” Harry said. “Well. Wouldn’t mind.”

“Oh,” Draco said. 

“If you don’t mind that I’m, er, not very good at this and I need it to be -- slow, and--”

Draco’s eyes were still bright, but he was looking Harry full in the face now. “You’re better than you think,” he said.

That was the first night they went up to bed together, brushing their teeth at the same time and making solemn eye contact in the bathroom mirror, padding into Draco’s bedroom together. “You don’t mind?” Draco said, and Harry shook his head, explained that he hated his room. Draco’s was full, detailed, something to look at in every direction: heavy green and silver drapes at the tall bay windows, a racing broom leaning in the corner, a wardrobe ajar so Harry could see heavy robes and crisp white shirts. A desk covered in Potions supplies and piles of parchment and the heavy-eyebrowed, glaring eagle owl perched by the window. It was a crowded, somewhat manic room. 

Draco frowned. “Well, you can hardly hate your room. It was meant for you.”

“That’s why I hate it,” Harry said, and paused by Draco’s bed, their shoes and robes off, staring at each other. Draco was wearing neat dark green trousers with a slightly crooked press to them, one of his clean white shirts. Harry was in a t-shirt and jeans. Harry cleared his throat and said, “Shirts or skins?” and startled Draco into a laugh, quick and uncertain.

They ended up slipping into the bed in their underwear. “It gets warm in here,” Draco said, though there were goosebumps on his arms. His chest was thin and a mess of pale white lines. Harry’s breath stuttered. He reached slowly, so that Draco could back away if he needed, and touched just below Draco’s collarbone, the thin, very slightly raised line. 

“Does it hurt?” Harry asked. He worried that he wasn’t helping: rough fingertips, Quidditch calluses and he’d never known how to be gentle. Draco shook his head. This was too weird, Harry thought, it was too much.

“My mother and I had a game, when I was a child,” Draco said. “It’s a stupid game. It’s called Nice Things. Do you want to play?”

“Er,” Harry said. “Sure?”

“The rule is you ask for a nice thing and I have to give you one,” Draco said, and waited patiently while Harry blinked at him. 

“Er,” Harry repeated. “Okay. Sure. Can I have a nice thing?”

“Yes,” Draco said. “At the Three Broomsticks tonight I saw Ernie Macmillan hitting on Madame Rosmerta, and she told him that he was too young for her but that it was a dreadful pity, because he was a _fine form of a man_.”

Harry cracked up. “That’s not nice.”

“Well,” Draco said, looking pleased. “Our definition of nice was always very broad.”

The third thing that happened was Christmas.

\---

Ron hadn’t been looking forward to the holidays, a sick pit in his stomach every time he thought about it, and then he felt guilty about feeling sick which only made him feel sicker. But it was awful, the idea of Christmas without Fred. He woke up crying angrily, clawing his fingers through his hair and over his neck so Hermione had to heal the little scratches he left behind by accident, her face close and worried. And then there was the fact that Hermione had to have Christmas with her family, didn’t want to risk spending any time at the Burrow this year when things were still so strange with her parents, and Harry insisting that he was going to stay at Hogwarts. Ron had several long arguments with him about it and Harry finally gave in and agreed to Christmas Eve through Boxing Day, but he refused any more.

“It’s not fair on Ginny,” Harry said, mouth twisting down. “We fight too much and we’re not -- normal around each other yet. I don’t want to ruin her holidays.”

“You _won’t_,” Ron said, and Harry told him that actually he didn’t get to decide that, and Harry and Ginny had already talked about it and agreed to this, and so then Ron had to be annoyed at Ginny about the whole situation, too.

“I’m sick of being pissed off all the time,” Ron said, arms folded behind his head. “It’s like I’m fourteen again.”

“Nonsense,” Hermione said. “You were much cuter when you were fourteen.”

Ron flipped her off. Hermione winked at him. 

At first, Ron was ready to blame Harry’s stubbornness on the Malfoy situation, but Malfoy, it turned out, was going to France for the whole Christmas holidays. He spent three days running around the Gatehouse in a flurry looking for things. Hermione said it wasn’t a surprise, Malfoy was a slob, he left his things everywhere, and Harry agreed but then spent twenty five minutes dutifully peering under couches and chairs and bookshelves looking for Malfoy’s favourite socks until Ron had to stop himself from seizing Harry and shaking him until he was normal again. 

“What normal do you want?” Hermione said bitterly, when Ron raised it later that night. She put her arms up, stretching, cracking her neck. Ron reached out for her hand, her bitten nails. “I actually hoped something like this might happen at the beginning of the year. I remember thinking that maybe he’d get his Malfoy obsession back and it would help him out of… the summer. More fool me.”

“Watch what you wish for,” Ron said ruefully, and they made faces at each other. Hermione was right, of course, and she’d even been right in wishing it. Ron couldn’t begrudge his best mate for being happy, if that was what it was, and if Ron was honest with himself he didn’t think it could be anything: Harry’s slow, prowling walk, the frequency of his laughter. 

Mostly Ron tried to leave them to it, though sometimes it was hard to avoid noticing. Two days before the holidays they gathered, all the eighth years, in their lounge to cram for Flitwick’s last minute end of year exam, something that Hermione said was “useful before a break” and Justin Finch-Fletchley announced was “maybe worse than the Snatchers”. It devolved into a mostly tipsy recitation of whatever bits of homework anyone could remember, Hermione throwing random questions out and fretting when she couldn’t immediately find the answer. Ron sprawled out on the floor in front of the fire, forearm over his eyes, so he could pretend he wasn’t paying attention to Harry lying on the couch with his head in Malfoy’s lap.

He opened his eyes when Harry said, laughing a little, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Of course I do,” Malfoy said. He had Harry’s nose enclosed in a neat loop between his thumb and forefinger. “I’m just saying, I like it.”

“But it didn’t have it--”

“I’m sure it did. I’ve been a fan for years.”

“You haven’t,” Harry said. “And I’m telling you, Tonks fucked up the _epinskey_. The bump is new.”

“Well, I--”

“So you’re basically just admiring your own handiwork,” Harry said. “Typical,” and Malfoy laughed down at him, opened his hand into a starfish and pressed it flat and teasing against Harry’s face, before they both seemed to realise that the rest of the room had gone quiet. Malfoy looked up, hand falling away.

“Uh,” Harry said. “What was the--”

“The Deluvian Principle,” Malfoy said smoothly. “I think that’s the answer.”

“Oh, you’re right,” Hermione said, mouth thin and disproving, and Ron sat up and leaned over her textbook with her. Out of the corner of his eye he watched as Harry rolled onto his side, settled his cheek against Malfoy’s thigh, perfectly unselfconscious. There was a faint pink in Malfoy’s cheeks.

The day before they all left, Malfoy spent six hours cursing in a corner of the kitchen, wand throwing up sparks and soot settling in his hair. Harry had gone out with Luna, who wanted to hunt down her potions ingredients from scratch in the Forbidden Forest, and Hermione had made a last minute trip to Hogsmeade to buy presents, and when Ron ventured into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, Malfoy stood back and said triumphantly, “_There_, come look,” and then, “Oh, I thought you were Potter.”

“What gave me away,” Ron said. Malfoy stepped away from where he’d been working, face pinched and wary, and Ron startled, stepping forward to peer at his handiwork. “Is that a _fellytone_?”

“Muggles call them telophonoes, Weasley,” Malfoy said condescendingly. “Honestly, you have a Muggleborn girlfriend. Shouldn’t you know these things?”

“What’s it doing in here?” Ron asked. He went forward a little nervously, and picked it up. The thing was heavy, old-fashioned curling black metal. It hung on a hook off the side of a large box with a dial. It was different from the telophono Ron had used to call Harry when he was twelve, the ones Hermione had shown him how to use, in a giant box on the street.

“Wizards used them, for a while,” Malfoy said. “In the early twentieth century, when there was that new taxation bill and the European borders closed and Floo Powder became impossible to get hold of. I found this down in the cellar, it had been disconnected. Quite a few old houses still have them.” He paused, then said, “My mother’s house in France has one. That’s how I know.”

“Is it,” Ron said, suspicious. 

The holidays were long and crowded and weird. Ron and George got wasted his first night back from school and spent the next day hungover and woeful and trying to avoid Molly’s wrath, and after that the days took on a fevered, hysterical atmosphere. Ginny raced around the house trying to attract their parents’ attention, ready to be told off or laughed at or threatened with a grounding, we don’t _care_ if you’re of age, Ginevra, this is absolutely the last straw--! Bill and Charlie started spatting again the way they hadn’t since they were in their early teens, and Percy, of all people, turned into the peacemaker, earnestly intruding whenever the tension seemed as though it was about to flare up.

In the midst of it all, Harry almost got lost when he arrived on Christmas Eve, and then he ended up spending Christmas Day hovering protectively around Ron, arms folded against his chest and glowering as though Ron’s family was a real threat. Ron, who had woken up from awful nightmares of Fred falling as though he were Sirius, couldn’t do anything but hunker back, mute and grateful, in the little space Harry carved out for him. He wasn’t much of a host, or a friend, and he spent the rest of the holidays feeling on and off guilty, especially when Harry had quietly returned to school. Not even Malfoy for company, Ron thought regretfully, and went back a day early: and found Hermione at the gates, the same idea. They caught sight of each other and Hermione flung herself against him and they nearly disgraced themselves in front of some very offended gargoyles.

“I thought I’d better come back and check on Harry,” Hermione said, when they’d got themselves straightened out again.

“Me too,” Ron said, and they wandered back to the Gatehouse slowly, hand in hand. Ron surprised himself by feeling a twinge of fondness when the Gatehouse rose up from the hills that surrounded it, its quiet, solemn build and the flowerbeds all carpeted in snow. He wasn’t sure when he’d grown to like it, only that he had, and when they opened the front door and quietly left their trunks in the hall, stamping off the snow, the last of the tension that had settled around him melted away.

Harry laughed, quiet in the still house, and Hermione and Ron looked at each other.

They moved carefully over the floorboards, but there was no need to be so cautious. Harry didn’t notice them. He’d dragged the huge armchair from the living room into the kitchen and he was slung sideways into it, knees hooked over one arm, feet idly kicking at the air, back to the doorway. He was holding the telophono to his ear and every now and then he laughed or murmured something into it, and most of the time he was just listening, his whole body loose and relaxed, curled slightly around the receiver as though Malfoy’s voice -- the faint, crisp syllables of it just audible from where Ron was standing -- was a fire he could warm himself at.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Hermione said, and Harry’s head jerked around.

“You’re back!” Harry said, and then, “I’ll call you later, Ron and Hermione are here,” and then he was hanging up and coming cheerfully towards them. He stopped halfway, eyebrows raised: “What’s with you two?” and Ron looked at Hermione and realised that she, too, was beaming, her eyes bright with tears, her whole posture annoyed and relieved.

“We decided to stop worrying about you,” Ron said. “Happy Christmas,” and gave him a hug.

\---

Draco got back at midnight the night before classes started again. There were dark circles under his eyes and he looked worn out from the long, punishing series of Portkeys and Floo connections. Harry watched from the kitchen window as he came down the path, dragging his trunk behind him. There was a nervous flutter brushing at Harry’s ribcage, his throat.

He’d worried when Draco first left that after twenty-four hours the magic of Draco’s touch would disappear and Harry would be miserable and blank again. Then Draco had worked out the telephone and called him every day, and now Harry was too used to the voice without the shape of him, the fact of him. Hours spent talking drowsily into the phone without having to worry about Draco’s keen eyes or being face to face with the hot embarrassment of becoming obsessed with his childhood enemy. (“Nemesis, I used to say,” Draco said. “Gives it a touch of class. Only Pansy and I couldn’t pronounce it right until third year. Anyway, you were already obsessed.”) He’d gotten used to sleeping late in Draco’s bed and wandering downstairs, pottering about with a cup of tea and pretending he might work on some of the holiday essays they’d been assigned, until the phone would start clattering demandingly against the wall and Harry would pick up to Draco saying, “Well, the end times are here: my mother has bought a bicycle.”

On the path outside Draco paused and looked up at the eaves of the house. Searching for a light, Harry realised, a light in a bedroom window. Harry went and opened the front door.

“Oh,” Draco said. “Hello.”

“Don’t you float your trunk?” Harry asked.

“I’m bad at levitation charms,” Draco said. “This has a Weigh-Less spell built into it, anyway. Hello.”

“You already said that,” Harry said. Draco stepped through the doorway and things got a bit muddled. Harry didn’t step aside in time, confused, and they bumped into each other and then Harry wondered if they should hug hello and moved towards Draco but Draco was apologising and backing away, “did I step on your toes,” and Harry repeated, disbelieving, “did you step on my _toes_?” 

They were half tripping over each other’s feet. Everything was clumsy and awkward and then Draco lifted one arm for Harry to get under and Harry clenched his fist in Draco’s robes and they straightened themselves out. Draco was a tall, lean shadow in the dark of the hall, except for the brightness of his hair. Harry moved forward, into the line of Draco’s body. He was shaking. They exchanged slow, warm kisses that started out tentative, their mouths brushing brief and tender like maybe they could pretend it wasn’t happening, then grew surer. Draco’s hand was in Harry’s hair, his strange, thin mouth generous and sweet now. Harry had to lean up to reach it. On the floor their shadows wavered, stretched into one.

In Draco’s bed Draco said, “You didn’t even bother to make it,” laughing up at Harry, dazed and pleased as Harry tripped out of his socks. He kept his t-shirt on, climbed in under the covers, nuzzled in against Draco’s neck. Draco was laughing, breathless little puffs of air, squirming when Harry rubbed his stubble against the sensitive skin of his throat. “Stop, stop,” he said, hands in Harry’s hair, and Harry rolled onto his own pillow, yawning. Draco hovered, hesitating, and Harry pulled him down by his t-shirt’s sleeve, caught that mouth again. 

“How was your Christmas?” he asked between kisses, and Draco made a noise low in his throat and moved back a little.

“Fine,” he said. “Well. As expected. I think I’ve given you all my news already.” Day by day, over the phone, calling first thing in the morning and rattling off his plans for the day, late in the evening again and running through everything that had happened. The jars of strawberry jam for porridge in the mornings, preserved from several summers ago. A Christmas lunch that they made for the first time together, no house elves left, and Draco burned the potatoes and Narcissa burned the chicken and they had a very loud and very polite row and ended up sitting side by side on the floor eating slices of Christmas Pudding. Long walks in the cold with his mother, who didn’t want to talk about anything. 

“Your mum was all right?”

“I assume not, but it would take more than a war and Lucius in Azkaban and the Manor confiscated for her to share anything as gauche as her feelings.” Draco’s lips thinned and he said, “I mentioned something about you, though.”

“Did you?” Harry said, grinning.

“I told her I was -- seeing you,” Draco said, flat on his back now and staring straight at the ceiling. “I hope that wasn’t inappropriate.”

“I’m not even sure what that means,” Harry said. “Does your mum know what that means?”

“She said, _are you, darling? Goodness_, and then offered me another glass of wine,” Draco said. “Make of that what you will.”

“Well,” Harry said. He pushed his face against Draco’s ribs, rolling in closer, nudging his foot at Draco’s ankle. He was so long, Harry thought, with satisfaction, as though he’d designed Draco himself.

“How was your Christmas? Was it all right with, er, with Weasley?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Harry said. “And you know her name.”

Draco glared down at him. “Was it all right with Ginny?”

Harry thought about it for a moment and then said, “Yes.” Actually, he hadn’t seen much of her, she’d been a flurry of motion and activity while he was there, helping her mum in the kitchen, trying to set up her dad’s new television-radio -- a very successful present from Hermione -- and briefly setting fire to the living room in the process, chasing her brothers up and down the stairs all day. Every now and then she caught his eye and grinned at him, her teeth locked, a little wild, a little violent, a little happy. She asked him once if it was true he was dating Malfoy, and Harry said he wasn’t _not_ dating Malfoy, and Ginny called him a weirdo and ran off again.

“Actually I think she’s sort of relieved,” Harry said, trying to parse the complicated mess he and Ginny had made into words. “If anything. We weren’t very - we weren’t very good together. Are you jealous?” he added, wondering with sudden panic if he was stumbling into another Cho situation. But Draco shook his head, simple and sure. Harry said, “I think - I love her but I’m not sure I really know her very well. And we always… I don’t know.”

He tried, stumbling over his words, to explain how awful the summer had been, the strange horror of their living bodies and the way they’d flung themselves at each other hard, as though the pain of that impact could wipe out any other pain. They hadn’t known how to talk to each other and they were both too impatient to learn. It was like they were both shouting at each other from separate burning buildings, desperate for the other one to come put them out. 

Draco was frowning, mouth pursed in thought. He said, slowly, “Are you telling me that… your trauma wasn’t compatible?” and Harry started to laugh.

All through the bitter highland winter, Harry warmed himself on Draco, who stood impatient and inviting. Harry was too short to lean over Draco’s shoulder so he caught him from behind, arms wrapped around him and face buried between Draco’s shoulder blades, steering them blindly towards Transfiguration class while Draco, unbothered, continued his conversation with Theo. He hooked his legs over Draco’s lap and Draco took hold of his ankle to secure him. Draco talked, offhand and almost friendly, to a few of the younger Slytherins in the Great Hall while Harry tucked his face against Draco’s neck and jammed his hands up under his armpits, and Draco just put one arm around his shoulders and let him linger.

The snow fell thickly around them, and in the mornings everyone in the Gatehouse had to walk up in a solid group to the castle, their wands held out with a warming charm to melt their way. The house elves took pity on them and started sending food to the Gatehouse, warm roasts and stews and soups with bread that released warm, fragrant steam when they broke it. The seven of them started actually using the kitchen table, sitting round it and complaining about Professor Slughorn, who had come back from the war worse than ever, and wondering when the wall that had been smashed in the west wing would be repaired, and swapping gossip about the seventh years. The table grew, a few inches a day, the walls shuffling out to make space for everyone.

Hermione and Draco began reading the same very long series of wizarding classics, nine books all about the same family and each about seven hundred pages long. Each book dealt with a new generation and was, as far as Harry could tell, full of very boring party scenes where some member of the family made significant eye contact with someone else and then cutting descriptions of clothing made clear the moral deficiency of their wearer, and Hermione and Draco were obsessed with them. They begged everyone else in the house to read them and everyone else refused, and Hermione and Draco ended up having stiff, cold conversations about who was marrying who and the latest scandalous betrayal. Their voices never strayed out of icy politeness but the conversations started getting longer. Sometimes Harry, yawning, went up to bed and left them to it, Draco creeping in beside him when Harry was almost asleep. 

It was too cold out to go out much so Harry spent his weekends in Draco’s bed, drowsing or talking or watching Draco read. Other times he kissed Draco awake, slow and hungry, or fell asleep too late with his mouth swollen, his leg pushed through Draco’s, hair damp with sweat. 

Harry was going to lose the last shreds of his virginity here, in Draco Malfoy’s bed, and he couldn’t bring himself to mind, Draco’s legs up around his waist so that when Harry ran his hand down Draco’s thigh he could feel the strain. Draco arched up against him, slid his hand into Harry’s underwear, begged. 

“Oh, my god,” Harry said, hitched over a moan, his face against Draco’s neck.

In February the snows began to thaw and the first crocuses and violets dotted their walk into class, along a much clearer path. Ron threw a fit and announced that he was dropping Potions, he didn’t like it, he’d never liked it, and he didn’t see why he’d put up with a bastard like Snape for all those years only to end up with a complete toad now. He lasted two weeks before Harry and Hermione dragged him glowering back to class. Justin Finch-Fletchley pulled a blinder and convinced McGonagall that in the new term, the Gatehouse students might as well split up their classes between whichever houses they liked, rather than blindly following their own, and as a result they all got Fridays off. Hermione spent four days going about looking extremely guilty before she revealed that she had bought a new kitten and smuggled it into the house, and now Crookshanks was sulking. Theo’s weed source dried up, but nobody could really be bothered to find a replacement.

Classes were strange. At first they had seemed so solid, a routine that Harry could rely on, but by Halloween they’d felt faint and dreamlike, as though he was only going through the motions of his old life. The others, to Harry’s surprise and cautious happiness, agreed. Hermione said that she’d done so much reading during the war and over the summer that she found herselves bored in classes. For the first time, she no longer followed every teacher’s word waiting for the moment where she could provide the answer; instead, her gaze drifted out the window, her attention sailed away. Ron said that he felt he’d suddenly reached a limit in the complexity of spells he was interested in. He could see the way to go about working some complex magic, but he couldn’t see the point. He didn’t need them; his reflexes were good enough with the simple stuff that only Harry could get past them, and even Harry only occasionally.

Draco said that he found himself reaching for his wand less. It worried him. He supposed it might have been because he’d had to borrow his mother’s wand for all those months, and it had felt wrong, it hadn’t quite worked for him, and so by the time he got his old wand back he was out of the habit. He could perform the spells when he needed them but most of the time it seemed easy enough to tie his shoe himself, to pick up and carry a book, to wash a cup. Harry thought there wasn’t much need to worry about it. Time would help. As things were, Harry liked going about things without magic when he wanted, too. He’d once got drunk with Seamus, who taught him a spell -- “so that everyone’s nice and ready, you know, when you want to,” Seamus said, and winked -- but Harry preferred to manage it himself. Sliding one finger in, then another, holding Draco’s hip down with his free hand while Draco jerked and sobbed and pleaded, taking his time.

When they accidentally made Draco’s sheets too filthy to bear, Draco insisted on going into Harry’s room, overriding all Harry’s protests. “Just one night,” he said. “What’s the matter with it, anyway? Is it full of pictures of Professor Lockhart?”

Harry flipped him off, trailing after him. “It’s just… you know.” He gestured around the blank space, the white walls, the big windows with nothing on their sills. After the clutter of Draco’s room it felt even emptier than normal, and he thought it was obvious, how small and bare Harry’s head was, as though he had nothing to offer, but Draco seemed confused. He looked around, frowning.

“But this is so nice,” he said. “It’s all quiet and peaceful.” Harry blinked at him and Draco added, with a yawn, dragging Harry to bed, “Maybe it just knew you were tired and needed some rest, that’s all.” 

After that Harry found he didn’t mind his room so much, although he still preferred sleeping in Draco’s, curled up in a mess of sheets and blankets that smelled like him, opening his eyes to catch immediately on one of Draco’s weird, intricate objects or, better, Draco’s face, narrow and sour like he was telling someone off in his dreams.

Spring arrived with a fanfare, a week of hot days that had them all down by the lake, lounging in the shade, paddling through the shallows and collecting plants that Neville wrote pleading letters begging for. Theo and Draco produced a football out of nowhere, and Dean was so overwhelmed that he nearly broke down in happy tears. 

“Really?” he said. “I mean, really? Wizards have _never_ heard of it.”

“There’s actually records suggesting that wizards might have played a version of it in the late eighteenth century,” Draco said snootily. “As an alternative to Quidditch, when there was a boom in Muggle towns and population and a lot of the old pitches had to go unused until they built up new privacy spells. Then it mutated back--”

“Oh, give it a rest,” Theo said. “Pansy’s got an aunt who married a Muggleborn,” he told Dean. “He taught us, but they think it’s very bad manners to mention it,” and Draco rolled his eyes and stole the kick-off. Harry ended up playing, too, with Dean and Justin and Ginny, who arrived in time from her Charms class. Ron was terrible at it and gave up after he tripped over his own feet for the third time, and Dean was the undisputed best, but Harry thought he gave a decent show himself, and he had the opportunity to get closer to Draco than on brooms, the two of them fighting for possession, breathless with laughter, Draco shoving elbows in at Harry’s ribcage.

“Foul, Malfoy,” Dean said. 

“_Another_ foul,” Ginny added, and then Harry tackled Draco into the grass and Dean said, “Well, maybe they cancel each other out.”

Football reminded them, and the next day Harry and Draco went flying, past the school boundaries and over the low hills and ragged rocky outcrops that led up into the mountains. Harry didn’t particularly want to play Quidditch, and Draco threw him a few narrow-eyed looks that suggested he wouldn’t be so affable with that form of competition, but it was nice to fly with Draco by his side, both of them quick to adapt to the other’s movements, following tiny leads and soaring high over the meadows and the waking life of the countryside. They ended up sprawled on a large, flat boulder, soaking up the sun, Draco’s t-shirt riding up and riding up further when Harry rolled over to put his mouth on Draco’s sternum, his stomach. 

“Give me a nice thing,” Harry said that night.

Draco blinked up at him, sleepy and lazy, like a lizard in the warm. “This is the happiest I’ve ever been,” he said.

\---

Dean’s mum and stepdad had decided to take the kids away on a month-long holiday over Easter that year, camping in Cornwall. Dean was invited but he’d had rather enough of camping the year before, and anyway, he didn’t mind staying at Hogwarts over the Easter holidays. It was normally busier than Christmas, lots of extra work and preparation for NEWTs becoming so intense that Hermione was caught trying to sneak two trunkfuls of books home with her. Besides which, Dean wanted to talk to Harry, and it was difficult to talk to Harry these days without Malfoy hanging off him, petting through Harry’s hair or playing footsie with him under the table.

Besides the absolute weirdness of the whole Malfoy-Potter thing, Dean didn’t mind it so much, especially because Harry seemed calmer and Malfoy was much less nasty, and whenever he _was_ nasty Harry started kicking him, which turned out to be quite effective. But Dean already felt awkward about the conversation, and he didn’t want to have it with Malfoy there. He was relieved when Malfoy announced he was leaving for the Easter holidays, going back to stay with his mother. He didn’t even mind that much when Malfoy said, thin-lipped, that Malfoy Manor had been returned to them, and they were probably going to spend most of the break beginning to clean it out, rebuild it. It made Hermione and Harry go pale, and Dean himself didn’t have any particularly pleasant memories of the Manor, but it felt far away, untouchable. _Better him than me_, Dean thought comfortably, and went back to his letter to Seamus.

When Malfoy left, though, far from making an easy space for Dean to slide into and talk to Harry, Harry descended into an absolutely foul temper. Ron, Theo and Justin had all gone home too, and Hermione spent most of her days cooped up in the library, so it was just Harry and Dean most of the time in the Gatehouse. It should have been perfect timing, but Harry spent his days glowering and snapping in response to any comment, no matter how mild, and after a while he got dark shadows under his eyes like he wasn’t sleeping again. Dean decided he’d just as rather not be killed by a cranky saviour of the world, all things considered, and joined Hermione in the library.

“It really doesn’t bother you?” he asked Hermione, on their way back to the Gatehouse, somewhere into her fevered recitation of the Wizengamot’s major bills in 1774. “The whole Malfoy thing?”

“It drives me mad,” Hermione said. “I should have seen it coming. Ron insists that he saw it coming, but I think he’s just grandstanding.”

“He was a kid, I guess,” Dean said, and then made a face. “We were all kids, though.”

“Yeah,” Hermione said.

“Does Harry really not care?”

“I think he does,” Hermione said. “Just not as much as…”

“Yeah,” Dean said.

He supposed there was no real need for him to talk to Harry, only it seemed like a polite thing to do. He’d never been entirely sure what to make of Harry. He’d thought Seamus overreacted when they were younger, hadn’t been fair to Harry, but then Harry had been a bit of a prick in sixth year when he and Ginny got together, so he could understand it. For a long time, Dean had watched Harry come back every year harder and sharper, more bitter, more dangerous, and been a little wary of him. He liked Harry, but it was a little like having a wild animal in your dorm, someone lost and not entirely safe. 

Then what should have been his seventh year came, awful and terrifying and violent, and Dean wondered if this was what Harry had been through every year; wondered how that would make you. He found it harder to excuse his own younger callousness. He found it harder to mind about the whole Ginny drama. It seemed fair that Harry would have seized happiness when he could. It made it harder, too, to mind about the Malfoy situation, especially when he was back at the Gatehouse and Harry looked handsome and brave and determined, like someone had pressed a gift into his hands and Harry wasn’t going to give it up.

Understanding didn’t make Harry’s bad mood any more enjoyable, though, and it made it harder for Dean to be a decent guy and do the right thing. Instead he spent his break studying with Hermione and writing hopeful letters and lying in the spring, thinking dazed and blissful, _we survived, we did it._

He was barely thinking about Harry at all, except with the occasional guilty twang, by the end of the holidays. It meant that on the day when students were meant to come back to school and he let himself out of the Gatehouse, he startled and almost fell over Harry, sitting on the front step.

“Where are you going?” Harry asked, frowning.

“Oh,” Dean said. “I thought I’d go meet everyone arriving. At the carriages, you know.”

He could feel heat crawling up his neck. He supposed he must be terribly obvious, but Harry just stared blankly at him for a moment and then jumped to his feet.

“Brilliant idea,” he said. “I’ll come with you.”

“Oh,” Dean repeated. “Well. Sure.”

The thestral carriages usually dropped everyone off at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where the students could crowd up chatting to the school together and the thestrals could melt back into the trees. It was about a fifteen minute walk from the Gatehouse, and Harry seemed distracted, checking his watch and frowning, but not as thunderous as he’d been for the past fortnight. It really was the best chance Dean had. It still took him nearly ten minutes of bland commentary that Harry barely answered to work up his courage.

“Um,” he said. “Harry. I actually wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Mmm?” Harry was peering ahead of them, moving quickly over the uneven ground. They’d beat the carriages, at this rate.

“It’s about Ginny,” Dean said, and waited, but Harry didn’t respond. “We’ve, um, we’ve been talking again recently.”

He waited again. Harry said, sounding puzzled, “Okay?”

“And, um, well,” Dean said. “I was thinking about maybe asking her out. For a pint, at the Three Broomsticks.” Harry still looked faintly puzzled so Dean said, “As a date, you know.”

“Okay,” Harry repeated. Something flickered across his face. Dean tensed, but Harry said, “I mean, you know we broke up, right?”

“Obviously!” Dean said quickly. “I wouldn’t ask your girlfriend out--”

“That would be weird,” Harry agreed. “But I don’t really get it. Do you want some tips? I’m not very good at that stuff. Ginny’s pretty straightforward, you should just ask.”

“No, I mean, I’m pretty sure she’ll go out with me,” Dean said, flushing. “Like I said, we’ve been talking. But I just wanted to… to check it was okay with you, it seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Harry said, looking panicked, “did you tell Ginny this? She’ll kill me--”

“No,” Dean said. “What?”

“Really, you don’t need to ask my permission about anything to do with Ginny,” Harry said. “Don’t tell her you did. She’ll be so mad. Why should I have a say about Ginny, anyway?”

“It just seemed polite,” Dean said. “We’re friends, and she’s your ex.”

“I guess,” Harry said, distraction growing. “Anyway, yeah, knock yourself out -- is that the carriages?”

There was a little stone platform for the carriages to pull up to, and Harry jogged up the steps just in time to be nearly knocked over by a flood of first and second years pouring out of the carriages, half-running back to school. Dean came up to join him, unsure whether to feel pleased or faintly offended. Pleased, he decided, looking about for a head of red hair.

Harry was looking too, up on his toes and frowning, but they both heard the voice first, crisp and posh and outraged.

“Out of my way, out of my _way_,” Malfoy said. “Move, children. Some of us have things to do. Eighth year coming through, _move_\--” and then he nearly knocked a thirteen year old over and got into the clear so he could see them, Harry grinning and standing apart from the crowd.

Malfoy faltered. Then he drew in a breath and pointed his snooty nose up in the air and sailed over to join him, drawing Harry close with an arm around his neck. His cheeks were pink. Harry grabbed at him. 

“Looking for me?” Harry said.

“Hello,” Ginny said at Dean’s elbow, and Dean jumped and beamed down at her. She gave him an interested look. “Have you come to carry my bags?”

“Yes, please,” Dean said, smiling down at her.

“Great,” Ginny said. “I’ve got a couple of bludgers in this one, here. George and I had an idea about how to make graduation a bit more explosive than normal.”

“Interesting,” Dean said, staggering under its weight. “Do you fancy telling me about it over a drink?”

Ginny’s eyebrows went up, her freckly face grinning and amused.

“Smooth,” she said. “Yeah, why not?”

\---

The fourth thing that happened was exams, Harry supposed, and by then they no longer felt very important. Hermione took them seriously, of course, and Dean and Justin were putting in a fair bit of effort. Draco surprised him by studying late, using the desk in Harry’s room more often than not because it was cleaner than Draco’s, surrounded by stacks of books and piles of parchment with ink stains on his pointy nose. Harry lounged about watching him or tried to distract him. He and Ron had mutually agreed on spending four hours a day studying during their free periods, and another one after dinner, and then to give it up.

“If last year isn’t enough to get into the Aurors then I don’t reckon this will change anything,” Ron said, satisfied, as they strolled back to the Gatehouse at a very reasonable hour indeed. “And you got that letter from Kingsley too, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Harry said, a little uneasily. The letter had come last week: a general expression of well wishes, hopes that Harry’s final school year was going well, and an assurance that while he was sure Harry was putting every effort into his NEWTs, the Auror Department was hoping to welcome him in the autumn no matter what his more traditional marks of achievement were.

Harry had read the letter, passed it silently over to Draco to read, and then folded it up and slipped it into a book he wasn’t planning to finish. Draco watched him, knees drawn up to his chest, chin propped on his knees.

“I’m just not -- sure yet,” Harry said.

Draco nodded.

“Would it be… I mean, is it really lazy if I just wait a - a year or so?”

“In my family it’s considered very common to work at all,” Draco informed him. “Plus you killed a Dark Lord and had to go right back to _school_. You’re due at least three years' holiday.”

“Right,” Harry said. He paused, tousling his hand through his hair. He had no idea what Draco’s plans were. He wasn’t really sure how to ask. “I really just want to laze around and hang out with you for a bit.”

“Why wouldn’t you,” Draco said, smiling in the kind of secretive way that meant it was mostly for himself. “I’m excellent company.”

“That’s what I keep telling everyone,” Harry said, satisfied.

He hadn’t told Ron, but he suspected Hermione had guessed and was torn between disapproval and relief. She was busy applying for every wizarding graduate program there was, trying to work out whether to prioritise the legal career or the Ministry or some sort of outsider activist movement. Justin announced his interest in teaching; he’d been corresponding with Neville on the subject, to everyone’s surprise. Dean was going travelling, though when asked where he kept stumbling and naming tiny Welsh towns close to Quidditch training camps. Theo said, “Oh, I’m going to write a great novel. If I’m still alive,” and then looked very mysterious and said nothing more when questioned further.

Draco didn’t seem to know where he was going to go or what he was going to do at all. He worked hard at the NEWTs because, he said, most of the Malfoy family vaults had been confiscated; if they were lucky, they might just scrape by with enough to restore the Manor, but he wasn’t sure how likely that was. It seemed certain that he’d need a job at some point.

“I don’t know,” he told the dinner table one night, after Dean asked, making Harry startle a little: Harry could have just asked. He should have just asked. “I’m really not sure. I’m good at Potions but I don’t know - I never really wanted to be a Potions Master or anything like that. I’m too cowardly for anything really dangerous.” Hermione and Ron looked pleased and Harry touched his knee against Draco’s. “I can’t bear children, so teaching’s right out.”

“It’s almost as though,” Justin said, rolling his eyes, “people shouldn’t have to make up their minds about the rest of their lives when they’re eighteen. You know, most Muggles don’t until they’re well into their twenties. Maybe later. My father only took up investment banking in his late thirties,” he added proudly, clearly unbothered by the fact that the majority of the table had no idea what he was talking about.

“Well,” Draco said, looking very discomforted. “That’s actually quite a good idea.”

Exams were the same as always: a long, harrowing trial, headaches all round, Hermione going all frayed around the edges, Ron looking as though he was on the brink of throwing up all day every day. Justin stayed up all night cramming for Herbology and promptly fainted thirty minutes in. Harry thought he’d managed all right, and was comforted by the fact that that was the way he always felt. Draco became almost unintelligible, and went around with ink stains on his fingers and his chin and a frantic look in his eyes and then sailed out of every exam announcing that he’d done: “Incredibly well. No, really, they’ll study that exam in the future. _No one’s topped it since_, they’ll say.” All of his grand statements were much better now that Harry could try and wrestle him into a headlock about them.

The end of exams was anti-climatic, when it finally happened. Harry and Draco and Dean and Hermione all had exams on the last day; everyone else had finished. They went back to the Gatehouse and opened several bottles of champagne. The evenings were stretching on, longer and longer into the warm daylight that ran away like water out of an unplugged bath, and they spent them lying out the back of the Gatehouse, in the long grass with the Forbidden Forest close enough to be a shelter, not a threat. There was an aborted game of Truth or Dare and Justin got wasted and held a sentimental toast. “Really, thank you all, chaps. It’s been an honour. A pleasure and an honour.” Harry coaxed Draco away and went upstairs to fuck him in Harry’s own bed, white rumpled sheets, expansive and warm. Draco had been right: it was a peaceful room. Now he slept the whole night through, curled around Draco.

The next morning Draco said, sounding oddly nervous, “Do you want to go for a drink in Hogsmeade tonight?”

“Sure,” Harry said, blinking. “Just us or should I invite the others?”

“You can invite them if you want,” Draco said. “And also, er. Goyle and Blaise Zabini will probably be there.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “Probably?”

“I mean, yes, they will be there, I’m going to meet them,” Draco said, all in a rush, “so now’s probably the time to tell me if this whole year has been an elaborate practical joke--”

“You don’t think it’s an elaborate practical joke,” Harry said.

“No,” Draco said. “I don’t.”

“Yeah, I’ll come,” Harry said.

Goyle was the biggest shock, in a way that Harry hadn’t been prepared for. He’d served eight months in Azkaban for war crimes, a reduced sentence because of his youth, but it looked like it had come close to ruining him. He was thin and drawn, that old tall, hulking build but all the muscle and fat gone, and his robes shabby and hanging off him, his hair thinner. He looked ten years older than Draco and Zabini, who propped him up between the two of them, fiercely tender and upset. Goyle himself looked exhausted, weak, ineffective. Harry had been prepared to be distant and angry but instead he could barely make eye contact, nodding at Goyle and then doing his best to prove himself unobtrusive, not a threat. Goyle reminded him of the fact that people were frightened of him, and so Harry was on edge, too, and Draco was worried and prickly and darting between the two of them.

Zabini, who Harry had never paid much attention to in school, was sleek, self-assured, adult. He shook Harry’s hand with an ironic sort of smile, as though Harry was a precocious child dragging attention away from the grown ups. Harry disliked him as much as ever, but it was good to see Draco comfortable, haughty and then laughing in quick succession, the way he normally only was around Theo and - and Harry, Harry supposed.

Theo came too, which helped, and Hermione and Justin and Ginny. Ron had drunk most of a bottle of tequila in separation of being done with exams last night, and was already in bed; Dean, Ginny said, was meeting Seamus, and might join up with them later. Dean ended up sending a Patronus to them, telling them that he and Seamus had Flooed to London and ended up in a club, but they should come, they should come!! -- and then Ginny flirted Zabini into submission, and Hermione said, “Actually, I’d _love_ a shot,” and the rest of them got dragged along, though Goyle begged off. He said goodbye to Draco and Zabini at the door, and Draco touched Goyle’s elbow hesitantly, and said that he thought he might visit Goyle next weekend, now that school was nearly over.

“Yeah,” Goyle said. “All right. See you then.”

In the club was not just Dean and Seamus but Neville, and Luna, and Lavender and Parvati, which floored Theo. They met up in the middle, laughing and relieved, everyone swinging their arms around each other. Hermione had her shot and another and Harry caught her saying to Parvati, “Oh, Parvati, you don’t remember Theo and Draco? They’re great, hang on, they’re over here--”

Harry danced with Ginny and Seamus and Luna and Neville and then grew bored of being well-behaved. He took Draco by the waist and Draco brought him in, smiling at him, fingertips at the back of Harry’s head, sliding down his back, his hips, Harry’s mouth on him. They moved slow, hips dragging, knocking back and forth between Draco’s caged fingers. Harry didn’t know how to dance, really, but he knew how to do this, catch Draco and move. Draco tilted his mouth back and kissed him, and kissed him, and then they went to find their friends and tell them they were going home.

“You know this is _my_ responsibility,” Theo said woefully, and Draco said, “What?” and Zabini said, “Never mind, it’ll work itself out.”

The next day Harry woke slow. They’d slept in his bed last night, and the room was filled with the clear, golden light of a summer morning, dust drifting slow through the beams, Draco’s hair flopping over his eyes, his dick soft against Harry’s leg, all the long, lovely lines of him. Harry loved this room. He loved this house. He pressed his face against Draco’s neck and drowsed, easy. When he woke again it was to Draco making fussy noises in his sleep, reaching, and then saying, mostly mumbling, “Are you awake? Water?”

“Yeah,” Harry said, swiping the bottle up and passing it over. Draco blinked his eyes open halfway through the swig, throat working, gaze groggy as it landed on Harry.

“Are you hungover?” Draco asked, when he’d finished, wiping his wet mouth.

“Nah,” Harry said. “You?”

“Not so much,” Draco said. 

Harry loved it here, between Draco’s thighs, Draco’s arms around Harry’s shoulders and his breath shuddering against Harry’s cheek. Draco was so hot and wet and his nails dug into Harry’s back. They rolled together, gasping, and at one point Draco arched up against Harry and started laughing, little huffs of pleasure and delight. “It feels good,” he said, quietly and then again. Harry rubbed his face against Draco’s neck, stubble dragging, caught his delicate earlobe in his mouth until Draco was squirming and laughing again. Harry felt sure, steady. He could feel all of his body working into this, the heavy roll of his shoulders, the push of his hips.

Afterward they lay panting, flat on their backs next to each other. They’d kicked all the linen down to the end of the bed, tangled around their feet. There was sweat gleaming on their chests, their stomachs. Harry reached and caught Draco’s hand, tangled their fingers together.

It was getting so warm. The sun came pouring in the window, hot and soporific. Outside there were apricot trees that Harry had never known about, ripening just outside his room, leafy boughs crowding in, filters of green and gold casting across the honey floorboards. Draco’s eyes were so grey and clear, but Harry only caught them in glimpses, Draco’s face turned towards him and his eyes blinking, tired, eyelashes catching and releasing.

“Are you going to move in with me this summer?” Harry asked, and Draco, smiling, said, “Yeah, Potter.”

\---

Theo actually thought he’d done a bang up job, all things considered.

Of course, it wouldn’t be taken into account at the tribunal. Then it would be all, oh, Nott, under your very nose, what were you _thinking_; oh, Nott, I could kill you, no really, I could tear your throat out with my teeth, you understand that I’m telling you I want to kill you; Zabini, did you know about this? And Blaise would inevitably sell Theo out, mumbling something under his breath about how it had been too late and Theo was terrible at responding to correspondence and really, what was he, Blaise, meant to do by the time he was finally brought in the loop?

Theo was resigned to being the scapegoat. His noble sacrifice would be all forgotten. Never mind that he’d never had any intention of going back to Hogwarts for his eighth year; never mind that he was independently wealthy and his entire life plan centred around enjoying the fact. Theo had just found a flat in Berlin and an excellent new dealer, and Pansy wanted him to go back to _Hogwarts_? 

But he’d done it, because he was a good friend and he fell for the whole Slytherin pride speech. And it did make sense: it wasn’t like any of the other Slytherins could pretend they’d been discriminated against and needed to repeat seventh year. But Theo, who had been congratulating himself for his decision to skip the entire war, had never taken it. He could go back. He could look out for Malfoy, who had spent a summer slumped in corners, his skin ashen, his eyes hollow and wrecked. Pansy had been near tears. Zabini, who had just visited Goyle for the first time, was stammering. Theo thought they’d made a wretched mess of things, all of them, but he remembered being fifteen with them: petty and mean and obsessed with each other. He found he couldn’t bring himself to leave Malfoy on his own, either.

They’d been worried when they found out about the Gatehouse.

“I think Draco will steer clear of him,” Pansy said grimly, watching Theo sort through his wardrobe and pile books into his trunk. “He’ll avoid him completely. That would be alright, but I don’t trust Potter to leave him alone.”

“Yeah, every second we’ve ever known him would point against that,” Theo agreed. He held up two cauldrons. “Which is the NEWT level one again?”

Pansy pointed. “Then again,” she said, “if Potter _has_ gotten over caring about Draco, I’m not sure Draco could bear that, either. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. If Potter’s indifferent it will be the final confirmation that Draco’s entire life has been pointless, and if he _is_ still creepy and obsessed he’ll kill Draco in the first month, and the school will watch and applaud.”

“So you’re saying we need magic option number three,” Theo said. “Somehow keep Potter obsessed and make him like Draco.”

Pansy laughed, a miserable little chortle. “Maybe you could exploit his hero complex,” she said, and Theo laughed, too.

But the more he thought about it, the more he didn’t think it was an entirely terrible plan of attack. Potter _was_ weird and obsessive about Draco, and as far as they could all tell, he’d saved Draco’s life at least twice. He seemed to have a terrible ego and maybe if Theo _could_ subtly position Draco as a kind of quasi Weasley girl, Creevey kid figure, Potter would be gruff and condescending and Draco could imagine himself noticed and all would be well. They just had to acknowledge each other while pretending to come off the bigger one, and then they’d be fine, and Theo would only have another eight months to steer Draco through Hogwarts.

The plan had been working marvellously. Wait a little bit before going downstairs to make sure they ran into each other now and then in the mornings, let Potter get used to the sight of Draco a little vulnerable and in pyjamas; make sure that Potter caught them smoking, and then make an early exit. Theo had been congratulating himself, imagining a happy future of Potter playing the heroic saviour of the world and nodding graciously at Draco, congratulating himself on being able to forgive even his oldest enemy. Theo didn’t have anything against Potter, personally, and he was grateful to him for having destroyed a Dark Lord and all, but Potter _had_ always seemed like a posturing sort wanker. It felt like the sort of thing that would appeal to him.

Only then, four days after they shared a joint, Theo watched at the end of a Charms class as Potter packed up his notes and turned waiting, almost shy, for Draco to come down the rows of desks and join him. Draco was pinched and nervous. He said something and then touched Potter’s arm, lingering just under his elbow, and Potter’s face went raw and slapped open, something so private and fierce that Theo was almost embarrassed to be looking at it. Draco seemed to notice but not notice at once, and Potter shoved himself in under Draco’s arm and Draco just allowed it, adjusting his hold of Potter’s shoulders. As though Potter was Blaise, or Goyle, or Theo himself, except for the hard, proud set of Draco’s jaw.

Anyway, it was around then that Theo realised he might have slightly miscalculated.

But what was he supposed to do, owl Pansy and confess all and tell her to come fix it? And it wasn’t like he had much time to step in and correct his mistake; before he knew what was happening it had been impossible to catch one without the other. Draco, waving his hands and carrying on about something while Potter leaned against his side, gaze wary and calculating on Theo; Draco drinking coffee in the mornings with Potter half draped over him, face tucked in at the nape of Draco’s neck. And Draco’s shoulders straightening, the cobwebs clearing out of his eyes, his whole expression alert and terrified and happy. By the time they started sharing a bed, Theo was in a state of deep gloom, and he gave up entirely by Christmas.

“It will probably be a quick death?” Blaise said doubtfully, the night before they were all due to meet up. “I imagine she’ll be so angry that it will be like - your life flashing before your eyes and then it’s over, you know.”

“Comforting,” Theo said glumly.

“You’ll have to play it smart,” Blaise said.

They planned it pretty well, considering the short notice and desperate circumstances. Pansy returned from the year hiding with her Canadian relatives two weeks earlier than expected, just three days after they all left Hogwarts, and insisted on seeing them all that afternoon. Still, Theo managed to give her and Draco two completely different start times, giving him a precious three hour headstart on Pansy’s mood. He took her to her favourite bar. He bought her all her favourite drinks, and told her a lot of nasty stories about Marcus Flint, who she hated, striking out with various of their acquaintances. He told her, truthfully, that he had missed her. She flirted with their bartender a little and told Theo that he was a good sort, and Theo thought that he was doing as well as he possibly could, and knew that it would be worth nothing.

Draco appeared three hours after Pansy, on the dot. He came in with the last dying daylight, warm against his silhouette, and he was easy, loose. He didn’t look like he had a year ago. He was all golden from the last few weeks lying out in the sun, and his skin was clear. He looked like he’d been sleeping well for months, which he had been. His mouth was quiet and full and sure. Behind him came Harry Potter. 

“Theo,” Pansy said, very calmly. “Can I have a word?”


End file.
